Review of Progress in Understanding Propagating Brush Discharges

A survey of recent work in modeling propagating brush discharges is provided. Experimental data from various authors are compared to a discharge model in which areas of charged surface are modeled as capacitive cells, and bridges between cells are modeled as spark gaps driven by the tangential electric field between cells. A theory is presented that may help explain the physics of this particular type of discharge. Charge transfer and post-discharge charge distributions are compared between the theory and the experimental data of several authors.