A study on simultaneous design of a Hall Effect Thruster and its low-thrust trajectory

作者：Kwon, Kybeom^*; Lantoine, Gregory; Russell, Ryan P.; Mavris, Dimitri N.

来源：Acta Astronautica, 2016, 119: 34-47.

DOI：10.1016/j.actaastro.2015.11.002

• Hall Effect Thruster
• Low-thrust trajectory
• Simultaneous design environmen

Space missions involving Hall Effect Thrusters are more and more common, and designs of both Hall Effect Thrusters and low-thrust trajectories require more elaborated process to meet the on-going mission demands. The design of a new Hall Effect Thruster can be improved by considering mission goals for high-demand missions rather than by relying on the current empirical and experimental design process. Moreover, the optimization of low-thrust trajectories involving the Hall Effect Thrusters can also be improved by incorporating the physics of the Hall Effect Thrusters rather than using a simplified model of the given thruster or incorporating the limited existing thruster characteristics. In order to accomplish these two objectives, a simultaneous design environment of the Hall Effect Thruster and its associated low-thrust trajectory is developed. By linking these two disciplines through a direct embedding of the Hall thruster analysis module within the low thrust optimal control problem, we show that a new Hall Effect Thruster and the associated low-thrust trajectory can be designed simultaneously. As a starting example applying this coupled strategy, a plausible, high-demand mission scenario is attempted with highly simplified assumptions on trajectory optimization, which is the final stage of a geostationary transfer orbit that takes place entirely outside the Van Allen radiation belts.

• 出版日期2016-3