Positive and negative streamers in ambient air: measuring diameter, velocity and dissipated energy

By T. Briels, J. Kos, Gjj Hans Winands, Van Veldhuizen, Ute Ebert, Ute Ebert. 2008

246 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Positive and negative streamers are studied in ambient air at 1 bar; they emerge from a needle electrode placed 40 mm above a planar electrode. The amplitudes of the applied voltage pulses range from 5 to 96 kV; most pulses have rise times of 30 ns or shorter. Diameters, velocities and energies of the streamers are measured. Two regimes are identified; a low voltage regime where only positive streamers appear and a high voltage regime where both positive and negative streamers exist. Below 5 kV, no streamers emerge. In the range from 5 to 40 kV, positive streamers form, while the negative discharges only form a glowing cloud at the electrode tip, but no streamers. For 5–20 kV, diameters and velocities of the positive streamers have the minimal values of d = 0.2 mm and v ≈ 105 m s−1. For 20–40 kV, their diameters increase by a factor of 6 while the voltage increases only by a factor of 2. Above the transition value of 40 kV, streamers of both polarities form; they strongly resemble each other, though the positive ones propagate further; their diameters continue to increase with applied voltage. For 96 kV, positive streamers attain diameters of 3 mm and velocities of 4 × 106 m s−1; negative streamers are about 20% slower and thinner. An empirical fit formula for the relation between velocity v and diameter d is v = 0.5d2 mm−1 ns−1 for both polarities. Streamers of both polarities dissipate energies of the order of several millijoules per streamer while crossing the gap.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7f117c56bf9def4b49fdcff48d74e639a065a044

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

In Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

Citations in the corpus

The physics of streamer discharge phenomena (2020, background): “e with voltage, when the voltage rise time is as long as 150ns, CONTENTS 23 Figure 13. Diameter (left) and velocity (right) of streamers as a function of applied voltage and polarity, reproduced from [67]. The dierent voltage sources and their voltage rise times are 15 ns for PM, 25 ns for TLT, 30 n”
Review of recent results on streamer discharges and discussion of their relevance for sprites and lightning (2010, methodology): “[43] The streamer diameters in STP air measured by Briels et al. [2008a] for voltages of 5 to 96 kV range from 0.2 to 3 mm, their velocities from 10 5 to 4 × 10 6 m/s (where we recall that velocities and voltages do not scale with density).”
Positive streamers in air and nitrogen of varying density: experiments on similarity laws (2008, background): “he altitude range of 60-64 km (± 4.5 km) and 20-50 m (± 13 m) in the altitude range of 76-80 km (± 5 km) [20]. The variation of sprite diameters resembles the variation of streamer diameters at 1 bar [24, 39, 40]. The sprites extend downward with velocities that vary by more than two orders of magni”