Investigation of heaterless hollow cathode breakdown
Investigation of heaterless hollow cathode breakdown
The development of long life high powered (>50A) hollow cathodes is of importance to meet the demand of increasingly powerful Gridded Ion engines and Hall Effect thrusters. High power cathodes typically operate at greater temperature ranges, which poses a significant challenge to maintain heater reliability. The heater component commonly used to raise the insert to emissive temperatures, has inherent reliability issues from thermal fatigue caused by thermal cycling with large temperature variations. A self-heating hollow cathode allows for potentially higher reliability through design simplicity of removing the heater component, and in addition there can be savings in mass, volume, ignition time and power. This study characterizes the initiation of the start-up process for a heaterless hollow cathode. As such the study analyses conditions of the initiation as a function of detailed geometrical and physical parameters. The Paschen curve can be seen to give a qualitative explanation for the breakdown voltage variance. The quantitative variations between the empirical results and Paschen curve are discussed in relation to non-uniform pressure simulations.
Daykin-Iliopoulos, A.
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Gabriel, S.B.
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Golosnoy, I.O.
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Kubota, K.
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Funaki, I.
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July 2015
Daykin-Iliopoulos, A.
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Gabriel, S.B.
ac76976d-74fd-40a0-808d-c9f68a38f259
Golosnoy, I.O.
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Kubota, K.
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Funaki, I.
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Daykin-Iliopoulos, A., Gabriel, S.B., Golosnoy, I.O., Kubota, K. and Funaki, I.
(2015)
Investigation of heaterless hollow cathode breakdown.
34th International Electric Propulsion Conference, Kobe city, Hyogo, Japan.
04 - 10 Jul 2015.
9 pp
.
Record type:
Conference or Workshop Item
(Paper)
Abstract
The development of long life high powered (>50A) hollow cathodes is of importance to meet the demand of increasingly powerful Gridded Ion engines and Hall Effect thrusters. High power cathodes typically operate at greater temperature ranges, which poses a significant challenge to maintain heater reliability. The heater component commonly used to raise the insert to emissive temperatures, has inherent reliability issues from thermal fatigue caused by thermal cycling with large temperature variations. A self-heating hollow cathode allows for potentially higher reliability through design simplicity of removing the heater component, and in addition there can be savings in mass, volume, ignition time and power. This study characterizes the initiation of the start-up process for a heaterless hollow cathode. As such the study analyses conditions of the initiation as a function of detailed geometrical and physical parameters. The Paschen curve can be seen to give a qualitative explanation for the breakdown voltage variance. The quantitative variations between the empirical results and Paschen curve are discussed in relation to non-uniform pressure simulations.
Text
IEPC2015_A Daykin-Iliopoulos_Manuscript_Final.pdf
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: June 2015
Published date: July 2015
Venue - Dates:
34th International Electric Propulsion Conference, Kobe city, Hyogo, Japan, 2015-07-04 - 2015-07-10
Organisations:
EEE
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 380287
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/380287
PURE UUID: 9389716c-37c3-43fb-b37e-ace04d0068ef
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Date deposited: 08 Sep 2015 12:51
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 04:05
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Contributors
Author:
A. Daykin-Iliopoulos
Author:
S.B. Gabriel
Author:
I.O. Golosnoy
Author:
K. Kubota
Author:
I. Funaki
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