Electrohydrodynamic Analysis of Dielectric Guide Flow Due to Surface Charge Density Effects in Breakdown Region

Abstract

A fully coupled finite element analysis (FEA) technique was developed for analyzing the discharge phenomena and dielectric liquid flow while considering surface charge density effects in dielectric flow guidance. In addition, the simulated speed of surface charge propagation was compared and verified with the experimental results shown in the literature. Recently, electrohydrodynamics (EHD) techniques have been widely applied to enhance the cooling performance of electromagnetic systems by utilizing gaseous or liquid media. The main advantage of EHD techniques is the non-contact and low-noise nature of smart control using an electric field. In some cases, flow can be achieved using only a main electric field source. The driving sources in EHD flow are ionization in the breakdown region and ionic dissociation in the sub-breakdown region. Dielectric guidance can be used to enhance the speed of discharge propagation and fluidic flow along the direction of the electric field. To analyze this EHD phenomenon, in this study, the fully coupled FEA was composed of Poisson’s equation for an electric field, charge continuity equations in the form of the Nernst?Planck equation for ions, and the Navier-Stokes equation for an incompressible fluidic flow. To develop a generalized numerical technique for various EHD phenomena that considers fluidic flow effects including dielectric flow guidance, we examined the surface charge accumulation on a dielectric surface and ionization, dissociation, and recombination effects.