A METHOD FOR COMPUTING CURRENT-DENSITY AND ELECTRIC-FIELD IN ELECTRICAL-DISCHARGE SPACE USING CURRENT FLOW-LINE COORDINATE

A new numerical analysis of current density and electric field with po sitive-corona discharge in a wire-to-plane geometry is made in this pa per. Some approximate or numerical methods have been often used to est imate Poissonian field in a unipolar corona-discharge space. However, they were not always useful from viewpoints of accuracy or convenience . In this study, current flow-line coordinate is introduced to solve P oissonian equation combining with current continuity equation. The met hod has an advantage of both having the same convenience as the conven tional approximations and having the same accuracy as the conventional numerical methods. II takes much less computing time and memory capac ity than the conventional ones. It is applied to the computation of cu rrent flow lines, equipotential surfaces, electric field strength, cur rent density, and charge density. Good agreements are found between th e calculated current and electric field distributions and the measured ones, on the plane electrode. Poissonian current flow lines are quite different from Laplacian ones. It is therefore, concluded that the ap plication of Deutsch approximation to the Poissonian-field analysis is invalid and that the numerical method as presented in this paper is r equired. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.