High Efficiency Control Method for the Hall Thruster System through Constant Flow Rate Control by Power Supply Control

摘要

We present a new power supply control method, which achieves constant flow Rate control for the thrust of a 20 mN-class Hall thruster. First, we present observations of a 20 mN-class Hall thruster with oscillation-mode-map. We make a theoretical study of the thrust and experiments on electrical characteristics of the Hall thruster, and conclude that thrust, thrust efficiency and low frequency oscillation are clearly determined by the external control parameters, anode voltage, gas flow rate, and magnetic flux density. Second, we discuss how to control the power supplies to suppress the power consumption, especially when the operation or thruster conditions change temporarily during use. The new method will be a very important guideline for Hall thruster system design and operation, in particular making it easy to manage the power consumption in a satellite by controlling the thrust resources. As a result of performance experiments for a 20 mN-class Hall thruster, over 36% thrust efficiency of the Hall thruster was found to be sensitive to the anode voltage and applied magnetic flux density. The new power control method achieves constant flow rate control method of the thrust. The benefits are light weight and low cost.