Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
Improvements to a Flow Sensor for Liquid Bismuth-fed Hall Thrusters
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Bonds, Kevin W. Polzin, Kurt A. |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | A prototype bismuth flow sensor that measures mass flow rate by thermally tagging a fluid element and detecting the thermal feature downstream is presented. The design of this sensor seeks to address the manufacturing and operations issues that arose during the fabrication and implementation of previous versions of the sensor. A sensor body, fabricated from Macor, was successfully bonded to the various other components that comprise the sensor. Direct heating of the ceramic body is implemented to keep the bismuth from losing heat within the sensor. This is achieved by bonding a heater to the body in such a way that the heater is the fourth wall of the flow channel. Through several thermal cycles, these bonds have exhibited no signs of degradation or failure. An optical system was implemented to detect the light emission from the thermal feature, but the light emission from the metal at these temperatures is very low in the detector system’s wavelength pass band. Options are proposed to either address the optical detection issues or to retrofit the sensor with a more conventional thermocouple measurement as was attempted in previous iterations of the sensor. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.2514/6.2010-6774 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20100032961.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2010-6774 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
