Influence of a Rotating Electrode on the Uniformity of an Atmospheric Pressure Air Filamentary Barrier Discharge

Abstract

The uniform dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) consisting of numerous microdischarges in a long time-scale may also meet the needs of industrial applications. In contrast to the glow DBDs, their uniformity is significantly influenced by the spatial distribution of microdischarges. In this paper, the streamers distribution in DBDs with rotating electrodes and the effects of the rotational speed on the discharge uniformity are investigated using a flow simulation and the SD of image gray levels, respectively. The simulation results show that the neutral gas flow caused by the electrode rotation has a great effect on the shape and length of the streamers. This has mainly contributed to the discharge remnant in the volume traveled by the neutral gas, which affects the discharge distribution. The SD of gray levels sharply decreases with an increase of the rotational speed, which indicates that the discharge uniformity can be effectively improved by the electrode rotation. When the rotational speed is over 3 000 rpm, the SD keeps almost constant, even with an increase of the applied voltage and frequency. It has similar characteristic as a uniform discharge.