Experimental Investigation of the Electrical Wiring Configuration of the HK40 Hall Thruster Operation.

Vacuum chambers providing a low pressure environment similar to the vacuum environment in low earth orbit have been used for the testing of plasma thrusters. A signi!cant proportion of research on the e"ects of vacuum facility on plasma thrusters has focused on the e"ects of background pressure and plume expansion; however, the electrical interaction of the conductive chamber walls with the plasma thrusters needs to be explored further. In this study, the operation of a prototype Hall thruster, HK40, was investigated to understand the e"ects of wiring con!guration of the thruster-cathode-chamber system. During the tests, the thruster was operated in two di"erent grounding con!gurations. A resistance analogy regarding the changes in the electrical potentials and measured currents was introduced. #e calculated thrust and e$ciency values of the two con!gurations were compared. #is study shows that the current extracted from the emitter surface of the cathode, along with the cathode-toground voltage can be used to estimate the thrust and thruster e$ciency. In addition, the theoretical predictions were compared with the values based on the measurements made with an in-house-built inverted pendulum type thrust stand. #e presented results show that the thrust and e$ciency values are predicted with 3.4% and 8.3% uncertainty, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]