Are partial discharges in artificial tubes chaotic?

Very narrow artificial tubes have been used to investigate the behaviour of discharges in conditions similar to those encountered in electrical trees. In the present study a discharge sequence measured prior to the formation of an electrical tree at the tube tip has been analysed to see if there was any evidence for the existence of deterministic chaos. The results show that the voltages at which the discharges occur do follow a sequence governed by deterministic chaos. The discharge amplitude sequence, however, contains a lot of noise and this makes it unclear whether or not they have an underlying chaotic pattern. Some speculation as to the meaning of these results for the processes controlling the discharge sequence will be made.