Electrical resistance of an insulating surface under artificial rain

In this paper, a method is developed to calculate the steady-state surface resistance of an inclined rectangular insulating plate under artificial rain in terms of both the rain and plate characteristics. The factors involved include the rain intensity, the resistivity, the precipitation angle and the velocity (drop size) as well as the plate length, the inclination and the surface roughness. A digital-computer program has been developed and used to investigate the effect of these variables on surface resistance over a wide range of the parameters in question. Furthermore, surf ace-resistance measurements are carried out on glass plates of different lengths and inclination, subjected to artificial rain with different intensities and resistivities. In general, the agreement between theory and experiment is found to be satisfactory.