High-spatial-resolution image reconstruction-based method for measuring electron temperature and density of the very near field of an applied-field magnetoplasmadynamic thruster

Abstract

Abstract A method based on image reconstruction is proposed for measuring the electron temperature ( T e ) and density ( n e ) distribution of the axisymmetric low-temperature argon plasma plume of applied-field magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters (AF-MPDTs). The method uses a complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor camera with narrowband filters of 460 and 500 nm to obtain the raw projection images in specific wavelength ranges. An image reconstruction method is developed to construct relative emission intensity profiles. The electron temperature distribution can be obtained by combining the relative emission intensity ratio of two profiles with a simple argon kinetic model. The electron density distribution can be calculated by constructing a function of relative emission intensity containing T e and n e . To verify the feasibility of this method, we diagnosed a very near field plume of a 15 kW AF-MPDT and obtained the distribution of parameters with a spatial resolution of 0.23 mm. The results show that the maximum T e and n e are located on the centerline near the exit plane of the thruster and decrease with both radial and axial distances. The second peak appears in the radial direction of both the T e and n e distributions, while their zones do not overlap. A comparative analysis of measurement results obtained by this method and the Langmuir probe method is performed to prove its accuracy. Moreover, this measurement method has the advantages of high spatial resolution and the ability to diagnose high-density and magnetized plasma. This method can be also applied to other optically thin axisymmetric low-temperature argon plasmas.