Low Voltage Control of Micro-Ionic Thrusters Using the Electrostatic Induced Potential of the Collector
Hengyu Zhang, Jiaming Leng, Di Liu, Zhiwei Liu, Dawei Huang, Mingjing Qi, Xiaojun Yan
Abstract
This work presents a low voltage (5 V) control method for micro-ionic thrusters with high operating voltage (>1 kV). When the collector of a micro-ionic thruster is connected to the negative electrode through a 5V switch circuit, and a high DC voltage (1-10 kV) is applied to the emitter, we can get a suitable control voltage (0-4 kV) based on the electrostatic induced potential characteristics of the collector. This voltage control method allows multiple emitters to share one boost circuit of high DC voltage without using multiple high voltage control circuits. Theoretical analysis, simulations, and experiments are conducted to validate our low voltage control method, and the attitude control of a lever device with two ion thrusters in different conditions is realized with a small steady error within 2 seconds.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2021_lowvoltagecontro,
title = {Low Voltage Control of Micro-Ionic Thrusters Using the Electrostatic Induced Potential of the Collector},
author = {Hengyu Zhang and Jiaming Leng and Di Liu and Zhiwei Liu and Dawei Huang and Mingjing Qi and Xiaojun Yan},
booktitle = {RA-L 2021},
year = {2021}
}