High-power hydrogen arcjet thrusters

A radiation-cooled thermal arcjet thruster named HIPARC-R has been developed and investigated. It has been designed for the 100-kW power level and is operated with hydrogen as its propellant. A specific impulse of 1970 s was obtained with a mass flow rate of 150 mg/s at the 100-kW power level and at a thruster efficiency of about 28%. This equals a specific input power value of 670 MJ/kg. Parallel to the experiments a numerical code system was developed to further optimize the next generation of hydrogen arcjet thrusters. This code system consists of a finite volume flow code coupled with program modules for the calculation of thermal, chemical, and electronical properties. In addition, a program module for the calculation of the heat flow inside the thruster, including heat exchange, has been applied to model the heat transfer processes during thruster operation. The thruster has been operated over a wide power range and has been intensively investigated for the qualification of the numerical code system. Within this paper the experimental setup and the code system are described, the performance data are presented, and experimental and numerical results are compared.