Residual resistance simulation of an air spark gap switch

TL;DR

This paper presents a numerical simulation of an air spark gap switch using two theoretical models, accurately predicting residual resistance and other parameters, and demonstrating the importance of residual resistance in circuit behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a kinetic model for simulating residual resistance in air spark gaps and validates it against experimental data, highlighting its significance.

Findings

Residual resistance is 0.2 - 0.4 Ohm for the studied circuit.

Including residual resistance improves simulation accuracy.

Without residual resistance, maximal current is overestimated by about 5%.

Abstract

The numerical simulation of an air spark gap has been carried within two theoretical models. The kinetic one [1] allowed us to calculate time dependencies for the residual resistance (0.2 - 0.4 Ohm for our selection of a circuit parameters), the spark gap channel width, the electron number density, the mobility, the conductivity, the ionization degree, the magnetic field in the discharge channel, the channel inductance and the electron drift velocity. Simulating a real circuit and taking into account a spark gap residual resistance demonstrates good agreement of both models with the experimental data, while that without taking into account this resistance overestimates the maximal current in the circuit by approximately 5%.