Thrust Measurements in Ballistic Pendulum Ablative Laser Propulsion Experiments
- Instituto Tecnologico de Aeronautica 12.228-900-Sao Jose dos Campos (Brazil)
- Instituto de Estudos Avancados 12.228-001-Sao Jose dos Campos (Brazil)
This paper describes a setup for thrust measurement in ablative laser propulsion experiments, based on a simple ballistic pendulum associated to an imaging system, which is being assembled at IEAv. A light aluminium pendulum holding samples is placed inside a 100 liters vacuum chamber with two optical windows: the first (in ZnSe) for the laser beam and the second (in fused quartz) for the pendulum visualization. A TEA-CO{sub 2} laser beam is focused to the samples providing ablation and transferring linear moment to the pendulum as a whole. A CCD video camera captures the oscillatory movement of the pendulum and the its trajectory is obtained by image processing. By fitting the trajectory of the pendulum to a dumped sinusoidal curve is possible to obtain the amplitude of the movement which is directly related to the momentum transfered to the sample.
- OSTI ID:
- 21137098
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 997, Issue 1; Conference: 5. international symposium on beamed energy propulsion, Kailua-Kona, HI (United States), 12-15 Nov 2007; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2931885; (c) 2008 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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