Laboratory experiments cannot be utilized to justify the action of early streamer emission terminals

• The early emission of streamers in laboratory long air gaps under switching impulses has beenobserved to reduce the time of initiation of leader positive discharges. This fact has beenarbitrarily extrapolated by the manufacturers of early streamer emission devices to the case ofupward connecting leaders initiated under natural lightning conditions, in support of thosenon-conventional terminals that claim to perform better than Franklin lightning rods. In orderto discuss the physical basis and validity of these claims, a self-consistent model based on thephysics of leader discharges is used to simulate the performance of lightning rods in thelaboratory and under natural lightning conditions. It is theoretically shown that the initiation ofearly streamers can indeed lead to the early initiation of self-propagating positive leaders inlaboratory long air gaps under switching voltages. However, this is not the case for positiveconnecting leaders initiated from the same lightning rod under the influence of the electricfield produced by a downward moving stepped leader. The time evolution of the developmentof positive leaders under natural conditions is different from the case in the laboratory, wherethe leader inception condition is closely dependent upon the initiation of the first streamerburst. Our study shows that the claimed similarity between the performance of lightning rodsunder switching electric fields applied in the laboratory and under the electric field producedby a descending stepped leader is not justified. Thus, the use of existing laboratory results tovalidate the performance of the early streamer lightning rods under natural conditions is not justified.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Electric discharges

Electric fields

Mathematical models

Switching

Voltage measurement

TECHNOLOGY

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)