| タイトル | An Innovative Manufacturing of CCC Ion Thruster Grids by North Carolina A&T's RTM Carbon/Carbon Process |
| 著者（英） | Shivakumar, Kunigal N.; Haag, Thomas W. |
| 著者所属（英） | North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State Univ. |
| 発行日 | 2003-02-01 |
| 言語 | eng |
| 内容記述 | Electric ion thrusters are the preferred engines for deep space missions, because of very high specific impulse. The ion engine consists of screen and accelerator grids containing thousands of concentric very small holes. The xenon gas accelerates between the two grids, thus developing the impulse force. The dominant life-limiting mechanism in the state-of-the-art molybdenum thrusters is the xenon ion sputter erosion of the accelerator grid. Carbon/carbon composites (CCC) have shown to be have less than 1/7 the erosion rates than the molybdenum, thus for interplanetary missions CCC engines are inevitable. Early effort to develop CCC composite thrusters had a limited success because of limitations of the drilling technology and the damage caused by drilling. The proposed is an in-situ manufacturing of holes while the CCC is made. Special low CTE molds will be used along with the NC A&T s patented resin transfer molding (RTM) technology to manufacture the CCC grids. First, a manufacture process for 10-cm diameter thruster grids will be developed and verified. Quality of holes, density, CTE, tension, flexure, transverse fatigue and sputter yield properties will be measured. After establishing the acceptable quality and properties, the process will be scaled to manufacture 30-cm diameter grids. The properties of the two grid sizes are compared with each other. |
| NASA分類 | Spacecraft Design, Testing and Performance |
| 権利 | No Copyright |
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