High voltage electrode design

[bowil20010]

Hi, I am new here. I am trying to design a high voltage electrode base on an IEEE paper that I read, but I am having a hard time determining what the different variables mean. Is this an appropriate place for this discussion?

The paper can be found here.

Electrode Design for Testing in Uniform Field Gaps

The efficiency of producing uniform fields in the test gap was evaluated for practical electrode configurations corresponding to the plane, the Rogowski and the Bruce profiles. The field intensity was calculated using the known charge simulation method and the calculated distributions of the...

ieeexplore.ieee.org

N. G. Trinh, "Electrode Design for Testing in Uniform Field Gaps," in IEEE Transactions on Power Apparatus and Systems, vol. PAS-99, no. 3, pp. 1235-1242, May 1980, doi: 10.1109/TPAS.1980.319754.

 

[BradtheRad]

Electrode shapes and materials have been discussed in several threads here.

Certain shapes cause a spark (or inhibit it) more readily than other shapes.

Certain substances erode less quickly due to sparking as compared to other substances.

Are these factors which you're trying to solve?

 

[bowil20010]

Yes and No. I am interested in preventing sparks which is why I'm interested in specific designs. But to add on to that, mine is more detailed. I am specifically trying to create a uniform e-field between electrodes in the parallel plate region. outside of the parallel plate region (defined as some radius from the center outward), the maximum e-field intensity should be lower than the e-field intensity in the middle. By doing this, you can perform breakdown tests and ensure that the peak e-field intensity is truly coming from the gap that you would like and not the corners. This is useful for determining breakdown field in air or other gasses.

There are various "profiles" that researchers have designed that work fairly well. some have advantages over others, but of course that means there will also be disadvantages. The profile in the paper I linked is Rogowski because he studied it. There are also Cheng, Harrison, Borda, etc. If I can figure out how to simply model the one in the paper, I should be able to translate it to any of the others and even continue research on my own. I'm just having a really hard time understanding the variables and translating them to matlab. I understand the general concept behind their design, but I dont know what the different parameters are. I'm sure I understand the terms, just not in the words used.