An investigation of surface energy input to gas during initiation of a nanosecond distributed surface discharge

The fraction of energy, directly introduced into gas during the initiation of a distributed pulsed surface discharge of the plasma sheet type, is analyzed using the results of investigation of the dynamics of resultant shock waves. Results are given of numerical calculation of development of flow within the model of thermal energy input. It is demonstrated that the experimentally obtained values of the velocity of motion of perturbations agree well with the calculation results assuming that 40 +/- 10% of the energy of surface electric discharge of nanosecond duration changes to thermal energy in the stage of energy input, i.e., during the time which is much shorter than 1 mu s.