Abstract
In this paper, the corona discharge is analyzed by Finite Element Method(FEM) combined with Flux-corrected Transport(FCT) algorithm. In the previous papers, Finite Difference Method(FDM) combined with FCT was used. Usually in the FDM, the regionof interest is discretized with structured grids. But to refine local regions with same resolution, much more grids are required for the structured grids than for unstructured grids than for unstructured grids. Therefore, we propose the FEM-FCT method to simulate the corona discharge. The proposed method has good flexibility in model shape and can reduce the computational cost by the local refinement where the physical quantities have steep gradients. Using the proposed method, we study the streamer growth of parallel plate electrodes which is initiated by the low and high perturbation density. We find that the varying the initial density of perturbation has very little effect on the streamer propagation. And the corona discharge of the rod-to-plane electrode is simulated. On the surface of the rod electrode, the high concentration of the electric field gives rise to many number of streamer seeds. The strong axial streamer propagate to the plane electrode. The weaker non-axial streamer repel each other and stop growing more. The results are very similar to those of the papers which used the FDM-FCT method on structured grids. Thus we can conclude that the proposed FEM-FCT method is more efficient than the conventional FDM-FCT method by virtue of the reduction in computational grids number.
