Study of microstructure of dielectric liquid in high electric field

Abstract

The method of molecular dynamics (MD) was applied to study the processes in liquid and dense gas under the action of an extremely high electric field. Two following model for a dielectric was used. A substance consisted of the molecules with a constant electrical dipole moment. The parallel code was specially developed using the CUDA technology in order to produce the computations of large ensembles of the molecules with the MD method using the high-performance graphic cards. The correlation function of the orientation of the dipole molecules was calculated for various densities of the substance. The density dependence was studied of the radius of the region in which the ion influences on the molecules with the constant dipole moment. The density dependency of the electric potential well depth near the ion placed in a polar dielectric was obtained. The formation of vapour channels in a liquid dielectric under the action of extremely high electric field (anisotropic spinodal decomposition) was also simulated. It was shown that channels are formed approximately along the electric force lines and the process looks like the formation of cracks in solid body due to mechanical stresses. The results obtained are important for understanding the microprocesses preceding a streamer formation during the process of discharge development in dielectric liquids.