TITLE:
Study on Characteristics of a High-Precision Cold Gas Micro Thruster
AUTHORS:
Zhaoli Wang, Changbin Guan, Xudong Wang, Weijie Zheng, Longfei Su
KEYWORDS:
High-Precision Micro Thruster, Performance, Flow Characteristic, Experiment
JOURNAL NAME:
Engineering,
Vol.16 No.1,
January
31,
2024
ABSTRACT: In
order to improve the reliability of the spacecraft micro cold gas propulsion
system and realize the precise control of the spacecraft attitude and orbit, a
micro-thrust, high-precision cold gas thruster is carried out, at the same time
due to the design requirements of the spacecraft, this micro-thrust should be continuous working more
than 60 minutes, the traditional solenoid valve used for the thrusts can’t complete the mission, so
a long-life micro latching valve is developed as the control valve for this micro thruster, because the
micro latching valve can keep its position when it cuts off the outage. Firstly, the authors introduced the
design scheme and idea of the thruster. Secondly, the performance of the
latching valve and the flow characteristics of the nozzle were simulated.
Finally, from the experimental results and compared with the numerical study,
it shows that the long-life micro cold gas thruster developed in this paper
meets the mission requirements.