Milli-Newton Thrust Stand

The milli-newton thrust stand is an inverted-pendulum, null-displacement thrust stand based on the NASA-Glenn design. Thrust from the attached propulsion source attempts to displace the inverted pendulum. Thrust stand displacement is measured by a linear voltage displacement transducer (LVDT). This displacement is “nulled” by an onboard electromagnet which provides a restoring force, the current of which is directly proportional to the thrust.

The thrust stand is capable of resolving thrust as small as 1mN [simple_tooltip content=’Hopkins, Mark A., Evaluation of Magnesium as a Hall Thruster Propellant, Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University, 2014.’][Hopkins][/simple_tooltip], with an estimated experimental uncertainty of ±5% [simple_tooltip content=’Massey, Dean R., Development of a Direct Evaporation Bismuth Hall Thruster, Doctoral Dissertation, Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University, 2008.’][Massey][/simple_tooltip]. The thrust stand is capable of being calibrated at vacuum to minimize thermal drift and temporal variation in output.