Influence of near-anode cusped magnetic field on the performance of a miniaturized cylindrical Hall thruster

Abstract

A near-anode cusped magnetic field topology is proposed for a 3 cm cylindrical Hall thruster (CHT), and its performance characteristics are investigated. The experimental results indicate that on imposing an anode voltage of 400 V, the thruster achieves a 2071 s specific impulse with a highly collimated plume. Compared with a conventional direct magnetic field, its thrust and anode efficiency are improved by 10.8% and 27.9%, respectively, which is due to the dramatic increase in the plume divergence efficiency (28.9%) and voltage utilization efficiency (6.7%). According to the analyses on the distribution characteristics of ion current density and ion energy, these performance improvements should be attributed to the downstream shift of both the ionization and acceleration regions. This work provides some design ideas on the magnetic field optimization of CHTs.