A method for computing current density and electric field in electrical discharge space using current flow-line coordinate

Abstract

A new numerical analysis of current density and electric field with positive-corona discharge in a wire-to-plane geometry is made in this paper. Some approximate or numerical methods have been often used to estimate Poissonian field in a unipolar corona-discharge space. However, they were not always useful from viewpoints of accuracy or convenience. In this study, current flow-line coordinate is introduced to solve Poissonian equation combining with current continuity equation. The method has an advantage of both having the same convenience as the conventional approximations and having the same accuracy as the conventional numerical methods. It takes much less computing time and memory capacity than the conventional ones. It is applied to the computation of current flow lines, equipotential surfaces, electric field strength, current density, and charge density. Good agreements are found between the calculated current and electric field distributions and the measured ones, on the plane electrode. Poissonian current flow lines are quite different from Laplacian ones. It is therefore, concluded that the application of Deutsch approximation to the Poissonian-field analysis is invalid and that the numerical method as presented in this paper is required.