Electric heating – Metal heating – By arc
Patent
1999-08-04
2000-09-19
Paschall, Mark
Electric heating
Metal heating
By arc
21912154, 21912136, 60202, 3133621, 3133591, 31511181, B23K 1000, H01J 724
Patent
active
061215694
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention concerns a device, that uses ions or neutrally charged gas to provide a thrust force or stream of matter. In particular, invention concerns a device that ejects matter with a jet form for use as an industrial plasma spray, industrial material processing, waste treatment, welding or cutting materials, or for plasma vapor deposition. The invention also concerns a device that can provide a propulsive thrust force for spacecraft propulsion, particularly an ion jet thruster, which uses an inertial electrostatic confinement design having a discharge plasma for generating ions that provide thrust when accelerated and expelled from the device in the plasma jet.
There is a well known need for an intense source of hot ionized or neutrally charged gas in a variety of industrial applications, such as plasma sprays for cleaning or etching surfaces and as plasma sources for sputtering or vapor deposition. Such a source could also be valuable for a range of applications that require an intense heat source, such as waste treatment or materials cutting and welding.
In another application, designers of spacecraft, particularly commercial satellites such as those used for telecommunications, are especially concerned with the cost per unit of "commercial payload" that is provided by their design. Giving the limited capacity of expendable rockets and the "space shuttle", severe size and mass limitations are placed upon the spacecraft design. Accordingly, the "commercial payload" for a communication satellite, such as one that would be launched into geostationary orbit to provide voice, data and television services, would include equipment, such as antennas, transponders, signal processing and switching equipment, which directly provide the communications service. In order to maximize the profitability of a given spacecraft design, the "commercial payload" must be maximized in order to provide the largest amount of revenue-producing capability. Because the remainder of the satellite concerns "overhead" structures and equipment such as the spacecraft body, solar cells, power system, thermal control systems and orbit steering thrust systems, the goal of maximizing the income-producing payload requires that the overhead payload must be decreased. Of course, the trade-off between "commercial payload" and "overhead payload" is affected by the need for efficiency and long life in connection with the overhead services provided on board.
The orbit steering thrust system for a spacecraft is important because it may be utilized for at least two purposes. One purpose is the maintenance of the spacecraft in geostationary or low/medium altitude Earth orbit or interplanetary flight paths. The thrusters impart a change of momentum which changes the velocity vector at a pre-determined point or segment of the trajectory.
The other purpose of thrusters is the function of actuators of a system for the maintenance of the spacecraft attitude or orientation. In the vacuum of space reaction forces are achieved by momentum changes. The rocket or jet method is well understood in the field. A further application for the propulsion system is the injection of the spacecraft into orbit, a task typically accomplished by relatively high thrust chemical rocket engines. Depending upon the requirements of the propulsion system, the thrusters must operate within a desired power regime and provide a specific impulse level (i.e., impulse or force per unit of propellant mass consumed during a given time interval), level of efficiency and thrust suitable for its application. In the past, in addition to bi-propellant liquid and solid chemical rockets, conventional spacecraft propulsion systems have used monopropellant thrusters. Electrostatic ion thrusters also have been proposed for these purposes; however, to date, this technology has not proven to be sufficiently mature and reliable for commercial and scientific spacecraft applications.
The next-generation communication satellites will require alternative thrust s
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patent: 5947421 (1999-09-01), Beattie et al.
Bromley Blair P.
Gu Yibin
Miley George H.
Nadler Jonathan H.
Sved John
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