A Computational Study of Negative Surface Discharges: Characteristics of Surface Streamers and Surface Charges

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of negative surface discharges in air through numerical simulations with a 2D fluid model. A geometry consisting of a flat dielectric embedded between parallel-plate electrodes is used. Compared to negative streamers in bulk gas, negative surface streamers are observed to have a higher electron density, a higher electric field and higher propagation velocity. On the other hand, their maximum electric field and velocity are lower than for positive surface streamers. In our simulations, negative surface streamers are slower for larger relative permittivity. Negative charge accumulates on a dielectric surface when a negative streamer propagates along it, which can lead to a high electric field inside the dielectric. If we initially put negative surface charge on the dielectric, the growth of negative surface discharges is delayed or inhibited. Positive surface charge has the opposite effect.

8 pages

References in corpus (5)

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• Positive and negative streamers in ambient air: modeling evolution and velocities
• Simulating streamer discharges in 3D with the parallel adaptive Afivo framework
• A computational study of positive streamers interacting with dielectrics
• The effect of the stochasticity of photoionization on 3D streamer simulations