Measurement of the Radial Temperature Distribution at the Central Part of an Arc Burning through a Polyethylene Tube

Abstract

density versus Stark half-width and the electron density versus temperature characteristics. Estimation is carried out for various tube inner diameters (2 and 4mm) and DC arc currents (5, 10 and 15A). The result shows that the temperature at the arc center is around 10,000K, and it tends to increase as the tube inner diameter becomes narrow and/or the arc current increases.The overall temperature distributions from the arc axis to the tube wall are obtained by combining these inner temperature distributions with outer temperature distributions which have been derived from C2 spectra. They are found to take a form of typical two-temperature distributions of ablation stabilized arcs.The electric field strengths of PE arcs are evaluated from the temperature distributions and the electrical conductivity versus temperature characteristics of thermally decomposed polyethylene vapor gas. The results agree well with experimental values.