Vol.10, No.2 (1997) 281-294
Abstract: The purpose of the present work was to examine the effect of absolute humidity on the first and second corona discharges as well as on the dark period between them. It has been recognised that there is a lack of data regarding the effect of humidity on air breakdown under impulses with long wavetails and the present work forms part of a detailed statistical investigation of the discharge development in a medium length positive rod-plane gap. The influence of the absolute humidity on the initial stages of the discharge especially as the experiments and the analysis that followed showed that humidity acts interactively with other discharge parameters i.e. the wavefront and peak of the applied voltages, the gap length and the geometry of the tip of the rod.
Key words: Corona discharges, breakdown phenomena.