Thruster Measurements

Thrust Measurements

A 0.5 mN thrust resolution pendulum type thrust-stand uses a high sensitivity inclinometer so that accurate measurements could be made of the thrust-stand arm deflection angle, which measures the thrust produced by the thruster suspended on this arm. The thrust stand is calibrated by an arrangement of weights applied to the pendulum arm in an ordinary manner. Thrust stand calibration measurements exhibited reproducibility of better than 1%. This thrust-stand was used in our experiments with 9 cm coaxial and cylindrical Hall thrusters.