Publication: Design of an open-loop control for a plasma thruster experimental breadboard
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2019
Defense date
2019-10-14
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Abstract
Software is a key part of most engineering projects in today’s ever growing digital
environment. This is specially true when discussing software designed for instrument
control and monitoring, as the entire operation of such instrument will be determined by
the the operation of the program, meaning that this will need to be as robust as possible.
The control and monitoring software also serves as the main, and sometimes the only,
source of the interaction between the operator and the machine, meaning that it needs to
be designed to be as comfortable and easy to use for the user as possible.
For this reasons the decision was made to develop a software to control the helicon
plasma thruster experimental breadboard of the Plasma & Space Propulsion Team (EP2)
at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M). This tool shall be capable of controlling the
different subsystems that conform the breadboard, including the RF power amplifier, the
DC power supply to generate the magnetic field, the gas mass flow meter and regulator,
the matching network and the oscilloscope. It should also be capable of monitoring in
real-time the response of the helicon plasma thruster. To this end, a labVIEW program
was develop capable of fulfilling such requirements.
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Keywords
LabVIEW, Electric Propulsion, Instrument Control, Software engineering