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Design, Optimization, And Construction Of Flexure, Optical, Damping, And Leveling Systems For Electric Propulsion Thrust Stand, Logan Hefferan

Honors Theses

An Thrust Stand is a device that uses the basic principles of torsion and displace­ment to experimentally measure and calculate the thrust generated by an Electric Propulsion (EP) Thruster. Western Michigan University is host to three organiza­tions that work with electric propulsion thrusters currently without a way of ob­taining direct experimental thrust data. For this Senior Design Project, the flexure, optical sensing, damping and leveling systems for a thrust stand originally designed by Hannah Watts in her WMU Honors Thesis: Design of A Thrust Stand for Elec­tric Propulsion [13] will be constructed. The four subsystems will be redesigned, optimized, and …