2024 Volume 2 Article ID: 148
Evaluation of propellant flow in the ground test facility (vacuum chamber) is important in the study of electric propulsion, and the measurement and evaluation of the dynamic pressure in the vacuum chamber have been conducted in our laboratory. For evaluating the dynamic pressure distribution of the propellant flow in a vacuum chamber, a measuring device that consists of an ionization vacuum gauge covered with a spherical shell with a single hole was designed and fabricated in this paper. Through measurement of the total pressure around the measurement point using this device, it was confirmed that the static pressure at the measurement point can be calculated from the average of the total pressure, that the dynamic pressure distribution around the measurement point can be estimated, and that the calculated average dynamic pressure is almost the same as the value detected by the conventional device. Since the influence of multiple sources of dynamic pressure can be estimated from the measured dynamic pressure distribution, this device was considered useful for propellant flow evaluation of electric propulsion systems.
