https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-022-00472-w
Regular Article – Plasma Physics
Optimization of magnetic field to extend the lifetime of Hall thruster with large height–radius ratio
1
Plasma Propulsion Lab, Institute of Advanced Power, Harbin Institute of Technology, 150001, Harbin, People’s Republic of China
2
Science and Technology On Vacuum Technology and Physics Laboratory, Lanzhou Institute of Physics, 730000, Lanzhou, People’s Republic of China
3
Key Laboratory of Aerospace Plasma Propulsion, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 150001, Harbin, People’s Republic of China
c
guoningaa@163.com
h
dingyongjie@hit.edu.cn
Received:
6
April
2022
Accepted:
2
August
2022
Published online:
30
September
2022
In steady-state operation of Hall thrusters excited by permanent magnets, the existence of temperature difference between the inner and outer permanent magnets will cause the deviation of the magnetic field configuration from the design value, thus affecting the discharge process. The simulation results show that the ion power loss on the inner wall increases by over 7.5% when the temperature difference between the inner and outer permanent magnets reaches to 140 ℃. The main reason is that the coercivity of the inner permanent magnet decreases more at higher temperature, and the magnetic field lines will incline toward the inner wall, resulting in the increment of the radial component of the electric field pointing to the inner wall. An optimized magnetic field, obtained by moving the inner permanent magnet outward in an appropriate manner, is proposed to alleviate the inner wall erosion. The optimized magnetic field has a near-symmetrical configuration, especially the nearly equal length of intersection lines of the magnetic field lines with the inner and outer walls, which is contributed to reduce the radial component of the electric field and preventing the inclination of the main ionization zone toward the inner wall, so that the peak value of ion power deposition on inner wall can be reduced by more than 50%. Based on the illustrated features and mechanism of wall erosion, an effective and easy-to-implement optimization scheme was proposed in this work to provide a useful reference for the design of long-life Hall thrusters with large height-radius ratio.
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