The start up of lighting and lightning: Streamer discharges in lamp ignition, electric switches and materials processing. (10118)

Project nummer: 10118

Omschrijving van het onderzoek

When a pulse of electric power is applied to matter of low conductivity, streamer discharges appear. The matter can be solid, liquid or gaseous (e.g., in ozone generation, combustion control etc., or in the primary stages of sparks and lightning in the atmosphere). In particular, streamer processes are studied in the ignition of metal halide lamps together with Philips Lighting. A streamer is a growing finger of ionized matter characterized by strong local self-enhancement of the electric field at its tip. Each finger has an intricate 3D inner structure, where in a very confined region the density approximation has to be replaced by a model of quantized particles. We will develop a computational tool where microscopic reaction cross sections, enclosures and external circuit are the input, and the 3D evolution of one or several streamers is the output. The major computational tasks are to couple Monte Carlo particle model and fluid model in different spatial regions, to develop a versatile 3D code where the Poisson equation is solved globally and with sufficient local accuracy at each time step, to implement the whole hierarchy from atomic to macroscopic scales within one computing platform, and to validate the numerical results on experiments.

Gebruikers

Three companies and one other university are involved in this project.

Projectleider

Prof.dr. U.M. Ebert
Centrum voor Wiskunde in Informatica
Modelling, Analysis and Simulation (MAS)
Postbus 94079
1090 GB AMSTERDAM

Status van het project

Startdatum:	01-11-2008
Einddatum:	31-08-2012

Print | Over deze site |

Sitemap | Voorbehoud | Gewijzigd 24-3-2010