ELECTRICAL

PROPULSION
FERNANDEZ, DENNIS P.
 ELECTRICAL PROPULSION

• Electric Propulsion (EP) is a class of space propulsion which makes use of

electrical power to accelerate a propellant by different possible electrical
and/or magnetic means. The use of electrical power enhances the propulsive
performances of the EP thrusters compared with conventional chemical
thrusters. Unlike chemical systems, electric propulsion requires very little
mass to accelerate a spacecraft. The propellant is ejected up to twenty times
faster than from a classical chemical thruster and therefore the overall
system is many times more mass efficient.
 AVIATION OPTIMIZATION POSSIBILITIES TO ELECTRIC
PROPULSION ARE

• Less or no fuel consumption and pollution by using

hybrid or full electric drives
• Increase of aerodynamic efficiency of aircraft by
distributed propulsion
• Silent propulsion for night starts and landings
• Lower operation costs (fuel, maintenance)
• Safety increase with redundant energy sources
 TYPES OF ELECTRIC PROPULSION
• Each type of electric propulsion has a number of characteristics in
common, though: high specific impulse, low thrust, respectable thrust
efficiency (how efficient the thruster is at turning the electricity applied
to the propellant into thrust)and overall efficiency (which takes into
account not just the system that produces the thrust, but any associated
equipment as well, such as electromagnets, propellant pumps, and other
systems), and specific thrust (the amount of thrust produced for the
mass of the thruster). In general, each of these factors are dependent on
a number of things, including power level applied to the thruster, the
type of propellant used, desired operational regime, and other factors.
 ELECTRIC THERMAL PROPULSION

• Thermal propulsion is the simplest in concept of all the electric propulsion

systems, and also one of the most common. A source of heat, powered by
an on-board electrical supply, heats a propellant (usually a gas), which
passes out of a nozzle.
RESISTOJET ELECTROTHERMAL THRUSTERS
• A resistojet is a method of spacecraft propulsion
(electric propulsion) that provides thrust by
heating a, typically non-reactive, fluid. Heating is
usually achieved by sending electricity through a
resistor consisting of a hot incandescent filament,
with the expanded gas expelled through a
conventional nozzle.
.
• One of the main advantages of the resistojet is that they
can achieve very high thrust efficiencies of up to 90%.
Resistojets are primarily limited by two factors: first, the
heat resistance of the Ohmic elements themselves; and
second, the thermal transfer capacity of the system, the
ability to remove heat needs to be balanced with the
heat produced, and the overall system needs to provide
enough thrust to be useful.
ARCJET THRUSTERS
• Arcjets are definitely the gray area between thermal and magnetically
based propulsion, arc heating. a spark, or arc, of electricity is sustained
between two electrodes. This heating is virtually the same way an arc welder
operates. This has the advantage that you aren’t thermally limited by your
resistor for your highest thermal temperature: instead of being limited to
about a thousand Kelvin by the melting point of your electric components,
you can use the tens of thousands of Kelvin from the plasma of the arc –
meaning more energy can be transferred, over a shorter time, within the
same volume, due to the greater temperature difference.
• In most modern designs, the positive electrode – the anode – is at the throat
of the nozzle. However, this arc also erodes your electrodes, carrying
ablated and vaporized and even plasmified bits of their material., So there’s
a limitation to how long this sort of thruster can operate before the
components have to be replaced. The propellant isn’t just heated by the arc
itself, but also conduction and convection from the heated structural
components of the thruster.
 INDUCTION THERMAL THRUSTERS

• Induction heating, where a radio transmitter is used to heat a propellant, is

another common option. Here, the propellant either needs to be partially
ionized, or be a polar molecule (where the molecule itself has a north and
south magnetic pole), which allows the radio waves to cause the molecules
to move. It has the advantage of not being thermally limited by the heating
element found in resistojets.
VASIMR(VAriable Specific Impulse
Magnetoplasma Rocket)
• The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) is an
electrothermal thruster under development for possible use in spacecraft
propulsion. It uses radio waves to ionize and heat an inert propellant,
forming a plasma, then a magnetic field to confine and accelerate the
expanding plasma, generating thrust. It is a plasma propulsion engine, one
of several types of spacecraft electric propulsion systems.
 ELECTROSTATIC PROPULSION

• Electrostatic propulsion uses electric potential differences between portions

of a thruster and an ionized propellant to accelerate that propellant at high
velocities.
• Electric spacecraft propulsion systems create thrust by using electric, and
possibly magnetic, processes to accelerate a propellant. More intense forms
of propellant heating, as used in electrothermal propulsion systems, offer
one possibility for increased exhaust velocity, but encounter limitations due
to restrictions on the temperatures that can be sustained by engine
components in contact with the propellant gas flow. Thermodynamic
expansion can be abandoned in favour of direct application of body forces
to particles in the propellant stream. This is the method used by
electrostatic and electromagnetic propulsion systems.
 ION THRUSTERS
• An ion thruster, ion drive, or ion engine is a form of electric propulsion used for
spacecraft propulsion. It creates thrust by accelerating ions using electricity.

• An ion thruster ionizes a neutral gas by extracting some electrons out of atoms,
creating a cloud of positive ions. These ion thrusters rely mainly on electrostatics as
ions are accelerated by the Coulomb force along an electric field. Temporarily stored
electrons are finally reinjected by a neutralizer in the cloud of ions after it has passed
through the electrostatic grid, so the gas becomes neutral again and can freely
disperse in space without any further electrical interaction with the thruster. In
contrast, electromagnetic thrusters use the Lorentz force to accelerate all species
(free electrons as well as positive and negative ions) in the same direction whatever
their electric charge, and are specifically referred to as plasma propulsion engines,
where the electric field is not in the direction of the acceleration.
HALL EFFECT THRUSTER
• In spacecraft propulsion, a Hall-effect thruster (HET) is a type of ion thruster
in which the propellant is accelerated by an electric field. Hall-effect
thrusters (based on the discovery by Edwin Hall) are sometimes referred to
as Hall thrusters or Hall-current thrusters. Hall-effect thrusters use a
magnetic field to limit the electrons' axial motion and then use them to
ionize propellant, efficiently accelerate the ions to produce thrust, and
neutralize the ions in the plume.