The Pre-Breakdown Phenomena in Atmospheric Air Gaps under the Impulse Voltage

Abstract

Pre-breakdown phenomena against impulse voltage are observed, where rod-toplane electrodes are used, and the gap length is 3～20 cm. Streamers are observed by an oscillograph, a still camera acompanied with chopped voltage and a photomultiplier. As the result of this investigation, for a positive and a negative polarity, the number of charged particles, the field intensities of primary and secondary streamers were obtained experimentally. Furthermore, the difference between a positive and a negative polarity was considered.