微纳卫星因其简单、经济、可靠越来越广泛应用于空间任务,传统的推进系统通常不能应用于微纳卫星平台.真空弧推力器(VAT)是一种利用真空中正负极之间放电产生等离子体射流的电推进装置,适用于微纳卫星的理想电推进类型,具有比冲高、效率高、质量小和使用固态推进剂等优点.介绍了同轴型和环型真空弧推力器系统方案及实验测试结果,针对环型真空弧推力器开展了数值计算研究,利用PIC方法重点考察了磁场对推力器性能的影响,主要包括磁场对等离子体密度分布和离子速度分布的影响;实验测试包括电参数测试、离子速度测量和微小推力器测量等,结果表明真空弧推力器具有良好的性能.%Micro-nano satellite is more and more widely used in space missions for its simplicity,cost-effective and reliability. Traditional propulsion system is not suitable for such satellite platform. Vacuum Arc Thruster(VAT)is one kind of electric propulsion device which generates plasma jet utilizing the discharge between cathode and anode in vacuum,it is the ideal kind of electric propulsion suitable for micro-nano satellite. This kind of propulsion has the advantages of high specific impulse,high efficiency,low mass and using solid propellant. In this paper,system schemes and experimental re-sults for coaxial and ring vacuum arc thruster are presented. Numerical simulations are carried out for ring electrode vacu-um arc thruster. The affects of the magnetic field on the thruster' s performance are studied using PIC method,including the influence of the magnetic field on the plasma density distribution and ion velocity. Experimental tests include electric parameter measurement,ion velocity measurement and tiny thrust measurement,the testing results indicate that the vacu-um arc thruster has good performance.
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