An actively-controlled thrust stand was designed for measurement of the time-varying thrust and for enhancement of thrust measurement flexibility. The thrust stand has a triple pendulum with four frictionless hinges. During thrust measurements, a thrust stand controller adjusted an actuator in order to suppress the pendulum motion. Hence, the thrust can be determined from actuator control variable. This design would offer the following preferable characteristics: measuring time varying thrust and enhancing accuracy of thrust measurement by applying complex control algorithms like Kalman filter. In this study, the actively-controlled thrust stand was designed, tested and calibrated for the evaluation of the characteristics. The designed thrust stand exhibited good linearity in the thrust range up to 2.0 N, and flat frequency response in the frequency range from 1.0 to 7.0 Hz. Additionally, the thrust stand successfully measured the 1 -N-class cold gas thruster.
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