Discharge performance of printed circuit board under saline fog environment

The process of leading to surface breakdown on the epoxy-based printed circuit board (PCB) in artificial saline fogs was investigated by using a measurement system, with particular attention on the inception discharge. Presented in this paper is the observation of the discharge performance on PCB during the experiment under the fog environments with the conductance in the range of 1.0 mS/cm to 8.0 mS/cm at room temperature. The comparative observation revealed the changes of PCB before and after the test. The effects of the test voltage, the gap distance and the fog conductance on the discharge performance were also studied. The study demonstrates that the discharge voltage decreased with increasing the fog conductance and increased with increasing the gap distance.