Enhanced Ionization in the Cylindrical Hall Thruster
Authors: A. Smirnov, Y. Raitses, and N.J. Fisch
Date of PPPL Report: February 2003
Published in: the Journal of Applied Physics 94 No 2 (July 2003) 852 - 857.
Conventional annular Hall thrusters do not scale efficiently to low power. An alternative approach, a cylindrical Hall thruster with a cusp-type magnetic field distribution, has been investigated. A relatively large 9-cm diameter version of a cylindrical thruster, operated in 300-1000 W power range and the 2.6 cm miniaturized cylindrical Hall thruster, operated in the power range 50-300 W, exhibited performance comparable with conventional annular Hall thrusters of the similar size. The cylindrical thrusters have unusually high propellant utilization, compared to conventional Hall thrusters. Numerical simulations, performed within the framework of a quasi-1D stationary thruster model, show that the increase in the propellant utilization does not appear to be quantitatively explained by a reduction of plasma wall losses. A more complete theoretical model, likely including kinetic effects, will be necessary to explain the observed propellant utilization effect.