Development of thrust stand for low impulse measurement from microthrusters
- Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656 (Japan)
A thrust stand has been developed to accurately measure thrust produced by two types of microthrusters--a liquid propellant pulsed plasma thruster (LP-PPT) and a diode laser ablation microthruster. The impulse of LP-PPT ranged from 20 to 80 {mu}Ns. The diode laser microthruster, which is a new type of microthruster, produces much lower impulse range of 1-10 {mu}Ns for about 1 s. The mechanical noise induced from the background vibrations becomes a crucial problem for precise estimate of thrust particularly in low impulse measurements. A data analysis method to reduce the effect of mechanical noise is proposed by introducing an additional term in a fitting function. It was verified that the analysis method used in our experimental conditions reduced variance caused by noise down to one-third that of a normal fitting method. The accuracy of the thrust stand is 2.1 {mu}Ns in the case of the LP-PPT and 0.7 {mu}Ns in the case of the diode laser microthruster.
- OSTI ID:
- 20636619
- Journal Information:
- Review of Scientific Instruments, Journal Name: Review of Scientific Instruments Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 75; ISSN 0034-6748; ISSN RSINAK
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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