Effect of positive DC corona discharge intensity on the variation of conductor surface conditions under contaminated environment

In order to study the effect of positive DC corona discharge intensity on the variation of conductors' surface conditions, an artificial contamination system was developed to perform contamination experiments. The conductor in the experiments was applied to different DC voltages. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis were employed to characterize the surface morphologies and compositions of the conductors respectively. In this paper, the charging properties of the suspended particles in the ionized field were analyzed. The ionization intensity ξ was calculated to represent corona discharge intensity. The relationship between the ionization intensity ξ and a parameter related to the conductor surface conditions was also established.