百千瓦级大功率磁等离子体动力推进系统设计研究

A new 100 kW water-cooled applied field magnetoplasmadynamic propulsion system, MAT-100s (100kW Applied Field Magnetoplasmadynamic Thruster System), is composed of a strong magnetic coil, a hollow cathode, an expansible anode, a water cooling system, a power processing unit, a propellant supply system, and a thermal control subsystem, etc. At present, the whole system is still in research, and each module is being developed and experimented. The experimental study of the magnetoplasmadynamic thruster in the strong magnetic environment has been carried out, and the performance of the thruster has been preliminary measured. Under the condition of magnetic field intensity of 0.4 T, the MAT-100S achieves 1.35 N (34 mN/kW) thrust, a specific impulse of 4200 s and an efficiency of 70%. The experimental results show that under the strong magnetic environment, the thrust and plume characteristics of the MAT-100S are significantly improved, and the performance of the thruster can be improved effectively. It shows that the stability and performance of the thruster can be effectively improved under a strong magnetic field. Compared with low-power electric and chemical propulsion in practical missions, the propellant consumption is only one tenth of chemical propulsion and half of conventional electric propulsion. In terms of mission time, it takes about only one-third of the conventional electric propulsion. The magnetoplasmadynamic propulsion system with strong magnetic field can better complete the orbit transfer and deep space exploration and other tasks. It is a kind of propulsion system with great development potential.