2-DIMENSIONAL FINITE-BOXES ANALYSIS OF MONOPOLAR CORONA FIELDS INCLUDING ION DIFFUSION

A new numerical technique is presented for computing the field of a system of monopolar coronating electrodes. The physical model is based on the Poisson and continuity equations; ion diffusion is allowed for and Kapzov's boundary conditions are imposed on the emitter. Discretization is performed through a mixed finite-boxes FEM scheme and the nonlinear system thereby obtained is solved in coupled form by Newton's method. Including ion diffusion improves the physics of the model and allows the continuity equation to be dis. cretized through powerful, spurious-solution free schemes, thereby Improving the convergence properties of the algorithm from a poor initial guess. Numerical results are presented for one- and two-dimensional geometries. © 1990, IEEE. All rights reserved.