A collisional-radiative model applicable to argon discharges over a wide range of conditions. III. Application to atmospheric and subatmospheric pressure arcs

Abstract

For pt.II see ibid., vol.22, p.632 (1989). The extensive collisional-radiative model for an argon atom plasma is applied to atmospheric and subatmospheric pressure wall-stabilised arcs in order to clarify the mechanisms by which the excited levels are populated in the axial region of these discharges. Computations are carried out for various sets of input parameters, such as the electron kinetic temperature Te, the atom temperature Ta, the ion temperature Ti, the electron number density ne, the ground-state atom population n1, the plasma column radius R and the escape factors Lambda mn and Lambda m, characterising the non-equilibrium plasmas under consideration. The predicted values of the populations in the excited levels and the qualities derived from them, as well as the values of the critical electron densities for establishing the local thermodynamic equilibrium in the axial region of the arcs investigated, are in good agreement with the corresponding experimental results. The effect of the changes in the discharge parameters Te, Ta, ne, R and Lambda 1n on the population mechanism, together with the role played by the recombination flow of electrons from a continuum, the deviations of the actual electron distribution function from the corresponding Maxwellian form and by the atom-atom inelastic collisions, are also shown.

Electron Induced Collisional Population Decay Rates for Levels of 3p54s and 3p54p Manifolds of ArI in Plasma

“…The most recent release of that model was published by Bogaerts et al [8]. This model has been successfully applied by Vlc ek and Pelika¨n [19,20] and more recently by Kano et al [21] in modelling discharges at electron temperatures similar to that discussed in the present work.…”

Developing an optimization algorithm for diagnostic modeling of optical emission spectroscopic measurement of non-equilibrium plasmas based on the argon collisional-radiative model

“…It has been verified that the Ar CR model can be applied to describe the number densities of the excited states in various Ar plasma sources. [21][22][23][24][25][26] 2.2. The generalized EEDF In order to consider the effect of EEDF, we applied the generalized EEDF 15) to the Ar CR model.…”

Method to determine argon metastable number density and plasma electron temperature from spectral emission originating from four 4p argon levels

“…4,6 At higher argon partial pressure, processes involving neutrals and ions may become important. 9,13 Nevertheless if the plasma remains a nonequilibrium plasma, electron excitation kinetics still plays a major role over other processes; 14 for instance, this can be true for atmospheric pressure microplasmas. 15,16 In this case, the range of validity is determined by the electron density and the rate coefficients of atom-induced excitation versus those of electron-induced excitation.…”