Static Pressure Measurements of a Low Power Arcjet

Abstract

The NASA Lewis 1.2 kilowatt arcjet has been used for a number of performance and lifetime studies. This design was modified to obtain static pressure measurements at several locations along the arcjet nozzle. These measurements were taken at various propellant flow rates over most of the operational envelope of the thruster. Measured static pressure distributions are considerably higher than predicted by ID models and are proportional to the arc power. A simple thermodynamic model is also compared to the data, and is shown to match the slope of the data while overpredicting the pressure.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Dec 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA243898

Entities

People

  • Kevin P. Talley

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Arc Jet Engines
  • Electric Propulsion
  • Elements
  • Energy
  • Engineering
  • Equations
  • Fluid Flow
  • Heat Transfer
  • Measurement
  • Performance Tests
  • Pressure Distribution
  • Pressure Measurement
  • Rockets
  • Solar Panels
  • Transducers
  • Voltage

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Aerospace Propulsion Engineering.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Fluid Dynamics.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster