This master thesis focuses on the study of the influence that different diverging nozzle angles have on the performances and reliability of a pulsed plasma thruster. This study was done in part with ODYSSEUS Space, a Taiwan based space tech start-up, in part working on the development of a 3-axis attitude control for CubeSats. This research was thus done using the power and size requirements that a thruster would have if designed for such a satellite.
Pulsed plasma thrusters are some of the oldest electrical thrusters to have been designed, tested and used in the space industry. While more recent designs such as Hall effect thrusters became more popular, there seems to be a rise in interest for pulsed plasma thruster thanks to their increased simplicity, affordable price in terms of both research and development, and the fact that universities and young start-ups can easily study and improve them.
The research was done during the 2018-2019 scholar year for this master thesis revolved around the design and testing of 4 different thruster configurations: an original thruster without any nozzles, and 3 configurations with 0-degrees, 20-degrees and 40-degrees nozzles to be added to the original design. The entire thruster was thought and designed to be modular, to allow for easy replacement of the nozzles, and even further improvements that might be done after this master thesis. Vanilla pulsed plasma thruster, most commonly parallel plate thrusters, most create thrust through the plasma created, while the remaining neutral particles created very little additional thrust. However, some research had started investigating the use of divergent nozzles to greatly improve the gas expansion contribution of the neutral particles, while only limiting the loss of electromagnetic thrust generated by the plasma. The aim of this study was to investigate which nozzle angle provided the best overall performance.
The initial performance measurements were supposed to combine tracking the electromagnetic and electrothermal thrust for each thruster design to compare their performances. While the electromagnetic thrust could be measured, the method used to measure the electrothermal thrust showed to be flawed and provided incoherent results. The impulse bit measurement showed expected results: the narrower the nozzles, the weaker the impulse bit, with the original configuration without nozzles providing the maximum impulse bit, this was mostly attributed to friction.
Reliability tests were also done, for 30 minutes to compare the lifespan of each configuration. It was shown that the original nozzles were to narrow, and after widening them, these tests showed that while the configuration without nozzles was the most reliable, adding nozzles did decrease operational lifespan, but with very little regard to the nozzle angle.

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