Abstract: In order to achieve the overall performance requirements，including the considerably high efficiency and specific impulse for an ion thruster，it is the main chief precondition to optimize the performance characteristic of the discharge chamber on the deigning phase of the thruster. Based on the primary design of the discharge chamber of 10cm ion thruster，a set of tests were executed to optimize the performance of the discharge chamber. During the tests，adjustment of the magnetic field parameters，changing the flow rates and modification of the key feature sizes were the main adopted approaches. With the comparison of a large number of data collected from different test strategies consisting of various operating condition and structure parameters，better structure geometric parameter and operation condition were discovered.The test results demonstrated that the discharge loss of the ion thruster is 227W/A，the propellant efficiency is 91% at nominal conditions of thrust to be 15.6mN and specific impulse to be 3100s after the optimization process.

Key words: Ion thruster；Discharge chamber；Performance；Optimization

摘要： 要实现离子推力器较高的效率和比冲等综合性能指标，优化的放电室性能是其首要的前提条件。为了获得10cm离子推力器优化的放电室性能，在放电室初始设计方案基础上，通过对工作参数和结构参数的不同组合试验，开展了性能优化研究，采用的主要手段是关键特征尺寸调节、流率调节和磁场参数的调节。试验获得了不同参数组合的性能变化趋势，得出了优化的放电室结构参数和工作参数。优化后的离子推力器综合性能试验结果表明，在推力15.6mN、比冲3100s的设计工况下放电损耗约为227W/A，放电室工质利用率为91%。

关键词: 离子推力器；放电室；性能；优化