Study of Pulsed Atmospheric Discharge Using Solid-State LTD

Pulsed atmospheric discharge has been studied by using a pulsed high-voltage generator based on linear transformer driver (LTD) scheme. Taking advantage of the output flexibility of the LTD, we have studied gas discharge behavior by applying two consecutive pulses to a coaxial discharge load consisting of a wire and a pipe. The experimental results have shown that the discharge current of the second pulse is always lower than that of the first pulse for the same voltage amplitude, when the two pulses are too close to each other (<100 $\mu {s}$ ). An explanation for this phenomenon has been explored by using a model that considers the effect of residual charge left by the first pulse. The findings obtained by this paper will help us understand the fundamental characteristics of pulsed atmospheric discharge.