For very small (grams of thrust) rocket and jet engines the power consumption and weight of servos moving the gimbals become the performance bottleneck.
Therefore, does anybody have any ideas how to vector thrust by ideally electrical-only means? Of course, a set of engines pointed in different directions may do the task, but each need again at least one controlled mechanical valve (with the same scaling problems as with servos), so multiple-engine solution is not very attractive.
I know Hall thrusters can be electrically vectored. But it is possible at the expense of the large amount of electrical power, typically not available for jet or rocket engine. What i am looking for is some solution well below 10 kW/N power/thrust ratio.
What is the nature of the propulsion unit are you thinking about?
If your concern is about the weight overhead when you gimbal the engine, for a chemical propulsion unit you may also consider TVC methods with fixed combustion chambers, such as secondary injection flow in nozzle divergent section or moving aerodynamic flaps located in the end of the nozzle. Those methods have been succesfully used in the past for missiles.
The baseline is 0.1N thrust liquid fuel rocket engine .
Yes, i was considering asymmetric combustion and throat flaps/vanes which is similar to solutions you listed. The problem is what these methods still need electro-mechanical actuators (servos or valves) which do not scale down well. Actually i am looking for roll/pitch/yaw control within 0.1g mass budget.
Magneto hydrodynamics, the right hand rule. Only the electrically conducting fluid moves.
In principle I do agree with Jerry.......but, the applicability is questionable.
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