An Initial Experimental Investigation on the Thermal Protection of Laser Thruster Nozzles
Ming Wen, Yan-Ji Hong, Jun Wang and Jian Yang
The thermal protection of nozzles is necessary to realise long-term and continuous laser propulsion. The initial investigation was carried out on two types of thermal protection with two variations of nozzle, in which a pulsed 10kWco2 laser and a three-reflection laser thruster were employed. The results showed that the nozzles were ablated to a different extent, which was dependent on the precise focus position, repeat frequency, accumulated propulsion time etc.