Behaviour of conductive particles in corona-dominated electric fields

The authors present a theoretical analysis and an experimental study of the behavior of spherical and cylindrical conductive particles in contact with a metallic electrode, and affected by a corona-dominated electric field in atmospheric air. An accurate mathematical model of the conductive particle movement is introduced, taking into account the variation of the electric charge of the small object in a mono-ionized electric field, and the action of air convection produced by unipolar injection. Several experiments have been performed, using point-plane and wire-cylinder electrodes to quantify the contributions of the electric field, space charge density, and shape, size and mass of the particles. The results are compared to those for electric fields without space charge