A Study on the Development of Simulating Tool for Evaluation of Electrostatic Discharge

Abstract

Explosion and fire cause about 30 reported industrial major accidents a year by ignition source which discharge of electrostatic generated to flammable gas, vapor, dust and mixtures. It brings economically and humanly very large loss that accident was caused by fire and explosion from electrostatic discharge. Thus, it is very important that electrostatic discharge energy is to be control below not to be igniting flammable mixtures. There are two kinds of analysis model for electrostatic discharge, human body model and machine model. Human body model is available the parameter of human's electrical equivalent that capacitance is 100 pF, resistance is . To simulate and visualize the electrostatic discharge from human body need a very expensive and high voltage simulator. In this paper, we measured the value of capacitance and resistance concerned with test materials and sizing of specimen and the value of charged voltage concerned with test specimen and distance to develop an electrostatic charge/discharge simulating tool for teaching with which concerned industrial employee and students. The result of experiments, we conformed that the minimum ignition energy of methane-oxygen mixtures meets well the equation , and found out that the insulating material and sizing of equivalent value having human body mode are the poly ethylene of 200 mm and 300 mm of diameter. Developed electrostatic charge/discharge simulating tool has many merits; simple mechanism, low cost, no need of electric power and so on.