Experimental investigations of time delay distributions inside a commercial gas tube

The results of the commercial indicator gas tube investigation, using the time delay measuring method are presented in this paper. This tube is usually used as an indicator of many electrical appliances. Time delay distributions for voltages from 75 V up to 100 V and relaxation times from 1 ms to 20 ms are presented. The time delay distributions for voltages U
_W
> 75 V have Gaussian shape, and for U
_W
= 75 V are multimodal. The multimodal time delay distributions indicate several different mechanisms which lead to breakdown. It is also shown that gas discharge tube has very small memory effect, which indicates fast response after the long (out of use) time, and consequently good characteristic for indicator tube. This characteristic of the used commercial indicators gas discharge tubes is consequence of gas tube geometry causing several processes which lead to breakdown under the same experimental conditions.