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Assessment of Pole Erosion in a Magnetically Shielded Hall ThrusterNumerical simulations of a 6-kW laboratory Hall thruster called H6 have been performed to quantify the erosion rate at the inner pole. The assessments have been made in two versions of the thruster, namely the unshielded (H6US) and magnetically shielded (H6MS) configurations. The simulations have been performed with the 2-D axisymmetric code Hall2De which employs a new multi-fluid ion algorithm to capture the presence of low-energy ions in the vicinity of the poles. It is found that the maximum computed erosion rate at the inner pole of the H6MS exceeds the measured rate of back-sputtered deposits by ~4.5 times. This explains only part of the surface roughening that was observed after a 150-h wear test, which covered most of the pole area exposed to the plasma. For the majority of the pole surface the computed erosion rates are found to be below the back-sputter rate and comparable to those in the H6US which exhibited little to no sputtering in previous tests. Possible explanations for the discrepancy are discussed.
Document ID
20160008257
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Conference Paper
External Source(s)
Authors
Mikellides, Ioannis G.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Ortega, Alejandro L.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
July 1, 2016
Publication Date
July 28, 2014
Subject Category
Plasma Physics
Meeting Information
Meeting: AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEE Joint Propulsion Conference
Location: Cleveland, OH
Country: United States
Start Date: July 28, 2014
End Date: July 30, 2014
Sponsors: American Society for Engineering Education, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc., American Inst. of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
plasma simulations

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