Influence of Gap Length on Wire - Plane Corona

This is a report on a study of positive, negative and ac corona in the wire-plane configuration for wire diameters ranging from 0.175-4.6 mm, and for gap distances of up to 20 cm. The results show that gap length like wire diameter plays an important role in the form of corona discharge. It was also found necessary to calculate certain basic variables such as the field around the wire surface and along the gap axis, the radius and the charge content of the avalanche, etc. This served the double purpose of verifying the extent to which the existing theories on corona apply to the wire-plane gap and, at the same time, of providing numerical data on the wire-plane gap that were not available in the literature. Extensive use was made of digital computational methods in order to give as ample numerical data as possible.