Simulation Study of Coupling Effects Between a Hall Thruster and a Power Processing Unit
Abstract
The complex and nonlinear load characteristics of Hall thrusters remain a key challenge in the design of propulsion power-supply output stages. In existing power-supply simu-lations for electric propulsion systems, the Hall thruster is often simplified as a fixed im-pedance or a prescribed current source, which makes it difficult to capture the real-time interaction between the power-supply output stage and the thruster discharge process. To address this issue, this study encapsulates a one-dimensional discharge model as an externally callable thruster slave and proposes a HallThruster.jl-Saber-Simulink co-simu-lation method. The proposed method enables synchronized closed-loop exchange be-tween the power-port voltage Vcmd and the thruster discharge current Iout . The results show that the discharge current under the co-simulation condition exhibits a sustained low-frequency response at approximately 11 kHz. Compared with a fixed-voltage standalone simulation, the co-simulation shows observable differences in port waveforms, spectral characteristics, and internal field distributions. This method provides a co-simu-lation basis for realistic load analysis of propulsion power supplies and subsequent stress evaluation of key components.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{fan2026simulation,
title = {{Simulation Study of Coupling Effects Between a Hall Thruster and a Power Processing Unit}},
author = {Zirui Fan and Yinjian Zhao and Jingjing Li and Yingying Tian and Leilei Shi and Suliang Wu and Liqiu Wei},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2606.28743},
eprint = {2606.28743},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.28743},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Simulation Study of Coupling Effects Between a Hall Thruster and a Power Processing Unit
AU - Zirui Fan
AU - Yinjian Zhao
AU - Jingjing Li
AU - Yingying Tian
AU - Leilei Shi
AU - Suliang Wu
AU - Liqiu Wei
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/27
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2606.28743
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.28743
AB - The complex and nonlinear load characteristics of Hall thrusters remain a key challenge in the design of propulsion power-supply output stages. In existing power-supply simu-lations for electric propulsion systems, the Hall thruster is often simplified as a fixed im-pedance or a prescribed current source, which makes it difficult to capture the real-time interaction between the power-supply output stage and the thruster discharge process. To address this issue, this study encapsulates a one-dimensional discharge model as an externally callable thruster slave and proposes a HallThruster.jl-Saber-Simulink co-simu-lation method. The proposed method enables synchronized closed-loop exchange be-tween the power-port voltage Vcmd and the thruster discharge current Iout . The results show that the discharge current under the co-simulation condition exhibits a sustained low-frequency response at approximately 11 kHz. Compared with a fixed-voltage standalone simulation, the co-simulation shows observable differences in port waveforms, spectral characteristics, and internal field distributions. This method provides a co-simu-lation basis for realistic load analysis of propulsion power supplies and subsequent stress evaluation of key components.
ER -