In situ erosion measurement tools for electric propulsion thrusters: triangular laser head and telemicroscope

The lifetime of electric propulsion (EP) thrusters depends particularly on the erosion characteristics of operation relevant components, for instance, the grid hole erosion of gridded ion thrusters or the channel wall erosion of Hall effect thrusters. Here two tools for in situ erosion measurements...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:EPJ techniques and instrumentation 2022-02, Vol.9 (1), p.1-23, Article 1
Main Authors: Bundesmann, Carsten, Eichhorn, Christoph, Neumann, Horst, Scholze, Frank, Spemann, Daniel, Tartz, Michael, Leiter, Hans J., Gnizdor, Roman Y., Scortecci, Fabrizio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atomic
Biological and Medical Physics
Biomaterials
Biophysics
Characterization and Evaluation of Materials
Diagnostics for electric propulsion systems
Dismounting
Electric propulsion
Electromagnetism
Erosion measurements
Gridded ion thruster
Hall effect
Hall effect thruster
Image resolution
In situ measurement
Ion thrusters
Measurement Science and Instrumentation
Molecular
Optical and Plasma Physics
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Research Article
Spectroscopy and Microscopy
Telemicroscope
Telemicroscopy
Triangular laser head
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Summary:The lifetime of electric propulsion (EP) thrusters depends particularly on the erosion characteristics of operation relevant components, for instance, the grid hole erosion of gridded ion thrusters or the channel wall erosion of Hall effect thrusters. Here two tools for in situ erosion measurements are presented, a triangular laser head for surface profiling and a telemicroscope for high-resolution optical imaging. Both can give access to radial and axial erosion parameters. The measurements can be done in situ without the need for breaking the vacuum and dismounting the thruster, which reduces thruster testing time considerably. In situ measurements can also help to ensure reproducibility of thruster performance conditions and can improve statistics of thruster characterization. The present work describes the fundamentals of both techniques in detail, selected experimental setups are presented, their performance is characterized and critically evaluated. The capabilities and limitations related to erosion measurements of EP thrusters are, exemplary, demonstrated for a gridded ion thruster RIT-22 and a Hall effect thruster SPT-100D.
ISSN:2195-7045
2195-7045
DOI:10.1140/epjti/s40485-022-00076-z