Simulation of the pulsed streamer discharge in water considering the effect of hydrostatic pressure

Abstract

Streamer discharge is a very complex multi-scale and multi-physics coupling process, and there is no accurate model that can describe its development. In this paper, a two-dimensional axisymmetric fluid model is established in COMSOL to simulate and study the effects of the applied voltage amplitude, the discharge gap distance, the rising edge of pulse voltage, and hydrostatic pressure on the development of the positive streamer discharge at a needle-plate electrode in water under a nanosecond pulse voltage. The results show that increasing the voltage amplitude, decreasing the pulse rise time, and narrowing the discharge gap all increase the electric field strength of the streamer, thereby affecting the electron density of the plasma channel, among which changing the discharge gap has the greatest effect on the electron density. And under the gap of 3 mm, the peak electron density can reach 3.76 × 1023 m−3; if the discharge gap is narrowed to 1 mm, the peak electron density is reduced to 1.20 × 1023 m−3. In addition, hydrostatic pressure and water molecule spacing are closely linked. Increasing the hydrostatic pressure decreases the electric field strength and the peak electron density in the plasma channel, and its effect on the peak electron density saturates with increasing hydrostatic pressure.