Performance of Electrohydrodynamic Thrusters When Stacked

Sammanfattning: Electrohydrodynamic thrusters or ion crafts arenew potential alternatives to conventional engines. They usehigh voltage to produce a thrust in the form of an airflow,also called an ion wind. The problem when implementing thesethrusters is that they are not efficient enough to compete withconventional engines. The focus of this report lies on how stackingaffects efficiency and performance, depending on the number ofthrusters used in each stack and how they are combined. Thiswas accomplished by placing thrusters on top of each other indifferent orders and studying how the change in current andvoltage affected the flow of air. From this it was possible todetermine that the performance of multiple thrusters in a stackcould produce a higher flow of air at a greater efficiency thana single thruster, as the total efficiency increased by the squareroot of the number of stacked thrusters. At a potential differenceof 3850 V the efficiency increased from 0.08 ppm to 0.47 ppmwhen stacking 1 to 11 thrusters.