Evaluatin of Plume Diagnostics in Electric Propulsion Testing

Abstract: The subject of this thesis is the acceptance test of a retarding potential analyzer system for plume and backflowmeasurements of electric propulsion devices. This thesis illustrates the preparation of the test campaign andthe test campaign itself. The preparation of this test campaign includes the development of the setup andthe software for data acquisition during test, as well as pre-tests including a leak test and cold flow test. Thedeveloped software is used to control the thruster and acquire the data. For this test a low-power 200 WHall effect thruster is used as a plasma source to measure the ion energy distribution function in the backflow.Testing proved that the retarding potential analyzer system is not able to measure the ion energy distributionfunction adequately, as a result the retarding analyzer system is not accepted and more testing will be done toimprove the performance of the system.