Numerical Simulation of Streamer Discharge Modeled by Drift-Diffusion Equations Based on SETD Method

Dynamic characteristics of streamer discharge in a parallel-plane electrode system are described within the framework of a drift-diffusion model coupled with Poisson’s equation at atmospheric pressure. The spectral-element time-domain (SETD) method is applied to the solution of streamer discharge problems, and the flux-corrected-transport (FCT) algorithm is also applied to suppress possible numerical divergence or numerical oscillation. The performance of the proposed method is examined in a number of numerical tests. Then the tempo-spatial evolutions of the streamer are obtained in detail under the different situations. Numerical results show that after the initial stage of adjustment, the streamers propagate in a steady-state mode, where the characteristics of the steady state are decided by background ionization frequency which is determined by pressure and background electric field together. And space charge effect is a dominant factor for the distortion of spatial electric field, making the discharge channel expand toward both electrodes faster. These works presented here are instructive for high-voltage insulating device protection and plasma application.