Research on characteristics of decoupled electroaerodynamic thruster with auxiliary electrode

Abstract

AbstractPrevious research has demonstrated that the decoupled method improves the performance of the electroaerodynamic (EAD) thruster and that the overall characteristics of the EAD thruster are influenced by the ionization and acceleration processes. In this study, a decoupled EAD thruster structure is proposed, and the influence of the auxiliary electrode is experimentally explored. The characteristics of electrical discharge imaging and thrust performance are studied in detail to demonstrate the performance of the decoupled EAD thruster. The experimental results demonstrate that the auxiliary electrode significantly influences the characteristics of the ionization and acceleration processes, and the condition of L1 = 5 mm is the best position of the auxiliary electrode for this experiment. There is an optimal auxiliary electrode arrangement that can improve the performance of the EAD thruster.