PPPL Colloquium: Mitchell Walker, Georgia Institute of Technology, “Challenges Predicting the Lifetime of Hall Thrusters”

Date
Feb 2, 2022, 4:00 pm5:15 pm
Location
ONLINE via ZOOM

Speaker

Details

Event Description

Hosted by Taylor Raines

Electric propulsion devices are rapidly replacing traditional chemical rockets on spacecraft. These devices possess a combination of high specific impulse and high thrust efficiency that drastically reduce the amount of propellant required to perform a mission. With less propellant, the mass, size, and launch cost of a spacecraft can go down while its payload capability remains the same.

The Hall effect thruster (HET) is one type of spacecraft electric propulsion device. Currently, HET development requires expensive, high-risk, ground-based qualification tests that exceed 7,000 hours to demonstrate the necessary on-orbit lifetime. To date, modeling efforts have been unable to predict the dominant failure mechanism observed in HET qualification tests — how quickly the accelerated plasma erodes the ceramic HET discharge channel.

This presentation discusses efforts to develop a fundamental understanding of this issue. This knowledge could help predict HET lifetimes and influence the design of future high-power HETs.

Zoom: https://pppl.zoom.us/j/361549769?pwd=R0d5d0hFUjZJNnBhRGR0RkszOGM1UT09

Meeting ID: 361 549 769
Passcode: colloquium

(Note: All participants microphones will be muted. During the talk, please send any questions/comments via private Zoom chat to the host.)

Most colloquiums are recorded, the videos are typically available within one week of the presentation date, available on the Colloquium Archive page.

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Meeting ID: 361 549 769
Passcode: 9764407391
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Meeting ID: 361 549 769
Passcode: 9764407391

Per the speaker's request, this colloquium was not recorded.

Sponsor
Taylor Raines