Modeling study on the effects of pulse rise rate in atmospheric pulsed discharges

Abstract

In this paper, we present a modeling study on the discharge characteristics driven by short pulsed voltages, focusing on the effects of pulse rise rate based on the fluid description of atmospheric plasmas. The numerical results show that the breakdown voltage of short pulsed discharge is almost linearly dependent on the pulse rise rate, which is also confirmed by the derived equations from the fluid model. In other words, if the pulse rise rate is fixed as a constant, the simulation results clearly suggest that the breakdown voltage is almost unchanged, although the amplitude of pulsed voltage increases significantly. The spatial distribution of the electric field and electron density are given to reveal the underpinning physics. Additionally, the computational data and the analytical expression also indicate that an increased repetition frequency can effectively decrease the breakdown voltage and current density, which is consistent with the experimental observation.

The Effect of Voltage Pulse Shape on the Discharge Characteristics in the Packed Bed Reactor under Air and Nitrogen

“…The reason is that the voltage change rate (dv/dt) decreases with increasing the pulse rising time, and a longer time is needed for increasing the applied voltage to the breakdown voltage, which is not changed under the same electrode structure. Furthermore, the current duration becomes longer with the increase of the pulse rising and falling time, which coincides with the conclusion obtained by Zhang et al [31].…”

Space charge behaviors in cable insulation under a direct current‐superimposed pulsed electric field

“…The effect of the pulsed voltage will lead to the migration, injection, and extraction of space charges at the rising and falling edges, and charge migration involves trapping and detrapping processes. All these charge dynamic behaviours are accompanied by the release of energy [30]. The dissipated energy may break the chemical bonds of the polymer and alter the microstructure, as hypothesized in electrical ageing concepts, following a variety of possible mechanisms.…”

Comparing Study on Formation of Large Discharge Currents in Atmospheric Pulse-Modulated Radio Frequency Discharges

“…The computational model for submicrosecond pulsed discharge and atmospheric RF discharge applied in this article is based on a fluid description with the assumption of Maxwellian distribution [27], so we should consider the validation of the fluid code cautiously when the kinetic effects become dominant especially in simulation of the short-pulsed discharge [50]. In the present fluid code, to improve the computational efficiency as possible and capture the mainly discharge characteristics, only six plasma particles are concluded, which are helium atoms (He), electrons (e), atomic and molecular helium ions (He + and He +…”

“…In part of the pulsed discharge, the short-pulsed voltage is described by a segmented function of time with smooth approximation [57] (9), as shown at the bottom of the page, where V 0 represents the amplitude of the pulsed voltage, T 1 , T 2 , and T 3 are the pulse rising time, plateau time, and the falling time, respectively, and here the pulse rising time equals the pulse falling time for simplification. Compared to the common linear function form for each phase, the smoothed approximation described in (9) has almost no influence on the accuracy of the simulation results but promotes the computational efficiency and stability effectively [50]. On the other hand, in part of the pulse-modulated RF discharge, the applied voltage is also expressed as a segmented function of time with power-on and power-off phases (T ON and T OFF )…”