Preliminary Design of a Laboratory Cylindrical Hall-Effect Thruster

A 3-cm cylindrical Hall thruster with permanent magnets was designed and modeled. The goal was to design a Hall thruster for Cal Poly’s propulsion laboratory of similar size and performance as Cal Poly’s MiXI thruster. The design process began with an investigation into the physics of Hall thrusters and selection of certain thruster parameters. The selected parameters were the diameter and depth of the channel, the total power input to the system, the discharge supply voltage, the cathode voltage, and the propellant flow rates to the anode and cathode. These parameters were used to determine the operational characteristics of the thruster which were then used to complete the thruster’s mechanical design. The thrust was estimated to be between 3 and 14 mN, the Isp was estimated to be between 900 s and 2100 s, and the efficiency was estimated to be between 33.3% and 75%.