Computational and Experimental Study of Time-Averaged Characteristics of Positive and Negative DC Corona Discharges in Point-Plane Gaps in Atmospheric Air

The use of stationary solvers instead of approximate solution methods or time-dependent solvers, which are standard tools in gas discharge modeling, allows one to develop a very fast and robust numerical model for studying the time-averaged characteristics of dc corona discharges. Such an approach is applied to dc corona discharges in point-plane gaps in ambient air. A wide range of currents of both voltage polarities and various gap lengths are investigated, and the simulation results are validated by comparing the computed current-voltage characteristics and spatial distributions of the radiation intensity with experimental results. Specific features of the numerical and experimental results at both polarities are discussed.