Positive Streamer Propagation and Breakdown in Air: the Influence of Humidity

Mikropoulos, Pantelis N.; Stassinopoulos, C.A.; Sarigiannidou, B.C.

doi:10.1109/tdei.2008.4483460

Cited by 42 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…the energy provided for inception) is higher. A correlation between the streamer propagation velocity and the ratio of the applied field over the stability A c c e p t e d M a n u s c r i p t field is given in [31], partly depending on the humidity level. A more recent study [32] gives contradictory results with a decrease of the velocity with increasing humidity, roughly explained by the increase of attachment and recombination coefficients with humidity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental study of the effect of water vapor on dynamics of a high electric field non-equilibrium diffuse discharge in air

Brisset¹,

Tardiveau²,

Bournonville³

et al. 2021

J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report results on the influence of relative humidity on the propagation speed, the intensity of the emitted light, the energy and the gas temperature of a pin-to-plane nanosecond pulsed discharge at atmospheric pressure in synthetic air. The discharge is generated under very high overvoltage (several tens of kV) so that it propagates with a voluminous, diffuse, and stable pattern. It is shown that the water vapor content has a strong impact on the discharge dynamics for gas mixtures with high relative humidity and for the highest electric field values. In particular, for voltage pulse amplitudes higher than 65 kV and relative humidity higher than 30%, the propagation abruptly slows down and the light intensity profiles show a stronger emission at the pin which weakens in the rest of the gap. The electric energy is slightly lower in humid air, independently of water vapor concentration. Also, time and spatially resolved gas temperature measurements carried out for different voltages show a late and significant heating at the pin whatever the water vapor content. An evaluation of the energy consumed in fast heating processes is proposed, showing an increased energy consumption at the pin in highly humid air. Besides, the hypotheses allowing for the consideration of the rotational temperature of the second positive system of nitrogen (N2(SPS)) as the gas temperature under high electric field conditions are discussed.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental study of the effect of water vapor on dynamics of a high electric field non-equilibrium diffuse discharge in air

Brisset¹,

Tardiveau²,

Bournonville³

et al. 2021

J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…in standard atmospheric pressures at sea level(Mikropoulos et al, 2008) indicating an uncertainty of . Then for 500 m length +FB we see an error propagation such that ( ) 17E V   MV, which is significantly less than the regression formula uncertainty of 44 MV due to nonlinearities in system development in different E-field profiles.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Electrostatic Conditions That Produce Fast Breakdown in Thunderstorms

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Narrow bipolar events (NBEs) are high power intracloud discharges that produce a characteristic bipolar electric field change waveform and are either isolated in time or occur at the beginning of lightning flashes. Observations of NBEs suggest they are produced by a streamer-based type of discharge referred to as fast breakdown (Rison et al., 2016). Fast breakdown can be either positive or negative in polarity (Tilles et al., 2019), propagates at velocities comparable to or faster than laboratory-produced streamers, and have complicated behavior producing opposite polarity breakdown that travels backward along the same path as the original discharge. According to Rison et al. (2016), fast breakdown (FB) has a role in initiating at least some if not all lightning flashes. The more energetic FB events produce high power NBEs, which initiate about 1 out of 6 lightning flashes in storms (Wu et al., 2014). FB occurs with a wide range of VHF source powers and durations, and is responsible for initiating other flashes and precursor events (Lyu et al., 2019;Rison et al., 2016). Recent attempts at modeling FB have tried to explain the NBE radio spectra as an ensemble of non-interacting streamers (Liu et al., 2019) and to reproduce NBE sferics using branching streamers (Cooray et al., 2020). Other works argue that cosmic ray air showers play a key role in igniting the initial streamers that produce lightning (Kostinskiy et al., 2020;Shao et al., 2020). Here we use an improved version of the Griffiths and Phelps (1976) lightning initiation model to address the problem from the stance of hydrometeor-initiated streamers. The model simulates the cumulative charge growth of a system of streamers based on energy considerations and basic electrostatics (Attanasio et al., 2019). We use the model to determine the electrical conditions required to produce powerful FB events that match observed NBE waveforms, and to determine the threshold conditions for producing the different types of FB observed to date. Methods Modeling the Collective Dynamics of a Streamer SystemThe Griffiths and Phelps lightning initiation model, hereafter referred to as the G&P model, was among the earliest attempts to model how lightning initiation can result from streamer phenomena (Griffiths & Phelps, 1976). The model expanded upon the idea that repeated positive streamers systems (i.e., coronae or coronas) would concentrate the charge at their starting point within the cloud, increasing the local electric field to the point where dielectric breakdown would occur (Loeb, 1966(Loeb, , 1968. As the positive streamers propagate in an electric field above their stability threshold, their charge increases, resulting in branching and additional streamer growth, and leaving negatively charged ionized channels in their wake (Figure 1a). The G&P model simplifies the description by representing the streamer charge as a conical system Abstract Fast breakdown (FB), a breakdown process composed of systems of high-velocity streamers, has been observed to precede lightning...

show abstract

“…The vertices of the model space grid cells form a simple cubic lattice, at the nodes of which the model discharge trees develop. The mean channel length averaged over 26 possible directions of growth is m. Taking into account that the minimum propagation speed of streamers in air typical of the initial stage of discharge development, at which electric fields are relatively low, m/s 14 , the model time step, at which the discharge tree morphology is updated, is set to s. The model does not consider the dependence of the streamer speed on air humidity and other factors discussed in study 15 . Discharge evolves in a uniform upward directed electric field with a strength of 65 kV/m which is lower than [3, Table 3.2] or at the lower boundary of [2, Table 3.1] maximum experimentally observed intracloud electric fields.…”

Section: Streamer/leader-based Mode Of Relay Charge Transportmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relay charge transport in thunderclouds and its role in lightning initiation

Syssoev

Иудин

Iudin

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A new mechanism of charge transport inside a thundercloud is suggested and numerically investigated. The considered mechanism can be called “relay” because it is provided by a dynamical network of a relatively small amount of continuously decaying and arising conducting plasma formations. It manifests itself in two consecutive modes corresponding to pre-streamer and streamer/leader stages of thundercloud development. The first one is provided by dynamics of conducting ionic spots recently described by Iudin et al.1 that prepare conditions for initiation of positive streamers. The second mode relies on dynamical network of streamer/leader discharges and finally results in the formation of a compact well-conducting structure that bridges an area of strong electric field inside a thundercloud and can be associated with a lightning “seed”. The effectiveness of relay charge transport strongly depends on the relative proportion of conductive elements (plasma formations) and drastically increases in the field-dependent case.

show abstract

Positive Streamer Propagation and Breakdown in Air: the Influence of Humidity

Cited by 42 publications

References 12 publications

Experimental study of the effect of water vapor on dynamics of a high electric field non-equilibrium diffuse discharge in air

Experimental study of the effect of water vapor on dynamics of a high electric field non-equilibrium diffuse discharge in air

Electrostatic Conditions That Produce Fast Breakdown in Thunderstorms

Relay charge transport in thunderclouds and its role in lightning initiation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About