2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
Thrust Performance of a Magneto Plasma Sail with a Magnetic Nozzle
| Project/Area Number |
24760669
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
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| Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
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| Research Field |
Aerospace engineering
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| Research Institution | Akashi National College of Technology |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
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| Keywords | 電気推進 / 磁気ノズル / 磁気プラズマセイル / 数値シミュレーション |
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| Research Abstract |
Magneto Plasma Sail (MPS) is a propulsion system used in space, which generates its force by the interaction between solar wind and an inflated magnetic field via a plasma injection. The magnetic nozzle can control the plasma flow resulting from expanded thermal plasma by using a coil and it obtains the thrust by exhausting the plasma flow from the back of the rocket. As a results by using numerical simulations, the optimized injected thermal plasma beta is 0.46 and the ratio of Larmor radius of injected ion to the representative length of the magnetic field is 3 at the injection point. In this situation, the maximum thrust gain of the MPS with the magnetic nozzle is 5 compared with the thrust obtained from only magnetic nozzle.
The thrust gain of the MPS with magnetic nozzle is 3 in case for the ground experiment under the same parameters optimized by the numerical simulation. In the present study, the thrust gain is successfully observed in the ground experiment.
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