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Design and Development a Prototype Pulsed Plasma Thruster (PPT)

Rezaeiha, Abdolrahim | 2010

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 40471 (45)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Aerospace Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Farshchi, Mohammad
  7. Abstract:
  8. Although Pulsed Plasma Thruster (PPT) has first been utilized in a space mission in 1964 but after more than four decades, it is still a space rated technology which has performed various propulsion tasks from stationkeeping tasks to three-axis attitude control for a variety of former missions. With respect to the rapid growth in the small satellite community and the growing interest for smaller satellites in recent years, PPT is one of the promising electric propulsion devices for small satellites (e.g. CubeSats) as the following advantages: simplicity, lightweight, robustness, low power consumptions, low production costs and small dimensions. In spite of the fact that the issues relating to μPPT scaling have been investigated to a certain degree in recent years, it is felt that for an application on CubeSats this topic has to be investigated in greater detail for even smaller dimensions and better performance. Therefore a laboratory benchmark rectangular breech-fed pulsed plasma thruster (PPT) has been designed, developed and successfully tested in a bell-type vacuum chamber at 10-6 mbar for the first time in west Asia (Iran). The PPT has been tested while the main capacitor, which is a 35 μF, 2.5 kV oil-filled capacitor, has been charged with a wide range of voltage, ranging from 750 V to 1750 V making the system stored energy range from less than 10 J to 60 J, producing the impulse bit varying from 0.4 mN-s to 1.3 mN-s. This work initiated a research program in Iran for working on PPTs and miniaturization of PPTs while increasing the performance parameters. In this thesis, the PPT design and the development is reviewed briefly
  9. Keywords:
  10. Design and Construction ; Microsatellite ; Pulsed Plasma Thruster ; Laboratory Bench Mark

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