Abstract
The work is concerned with the modeling of low-current quasi-stationary discharges, including the Townsend and corona discharges. The aim is to develop an integrated approach suitable for the computation of the whole range of existence of a quasi-stationary discharge from its inception to a non-stationary transition to another discharge form, such as a transition from the Townsend discharge to a normal glow discharge or the corona-to-streamer transition. This task includes three steps: (i) modeling of the ignition of a self-sustaining discharge, (ii) modeling of the quasi-stationary evolution of the discharge with increasing current, and (iii) the determination of the current range where the quasi-stationary discharge becomes unstable and the non-stationary transition to another discharge form begins. Each of these three steps is considered in some detail with a number of examples, referring mostly to discharges in high-pressure air.
Highlights
The physics of many gas discharge systems has been understood reasonably well
Time-dependent solvers can be used for the computation of steady-state gas discharges: an initial state of a discharge is specified and its relaxation over time is followed until a steady state has been attained
The condition of initiation of a self-sustaining gas discharge, where the discharge voltage is just sufficient for the electron impact ionization to compensate losses of the charged particles, is well known for wide parallel-plate electrodes, where the applied electric field is uniform and diffusion of the charged particles is of minor importance
Summary
The physics of many gas discharge systems has been understood reasonably well . In simulations of low-current self-sustaining discharges, this step can be performed in a routine way using the resonance method In this work, such integrated approach is discussed in some detail and examples of its application to corona discharges of different configurations and both polarities are shown. An alternative approach to investigation of stability is to apply a perturbation to a steady-state solution and to follow the development of the perturbation by means of a time-dependent solver. This approach allows studying stability against both small and finite perturbations. In order not to overload the paper, some material has been combined into three appendixes: Appendix A, where the boundary conditions for drift-diffusion equations are briefly discussed; Appendix B, concerned with plasmachemical processes and transport coefficients of low-current discharges in high-pressure air; and Appendix C, where the effective reduced temperature of a pair of ion species in high electric fields is briefly discussed
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