Numerical description of high frequency ignition of fluorescent tubes

Abstract

The effect of the frequency on the breakdown time in a straight discharge tube is investigated by means of a fluid model. The discharge tube is similar to a compact fluorescent lamp tube, containing argon at 3 Torr and mercury at a few Torr. The mechanism of breakdown at frequencies of the order of several 10 kHz is considered and related to breakdown at a dc voltage. During a negative potential on the powered electrode, an ionization wave traverses the tube in a way similar to that in a dc operated tube. During a positive potential on the powered electrode, the electric field in the part of the tube already traversed by the ionization wave is enhanced by negative charge on the inner wall of the tube. Although the ionized region does not extend during this phase, the ionization density increases substantially. Furthermore, we investigated the dependence of the breakdown time on the applied frequency and found that the breakdown voltage is independent of the frequency. This is shown to be consistent with experimental data.

Electric Breakdown in Long Discharge Tubes at Low Pressure (Review)

“…Research was conducted in the universities of Eindhoven (Holland) and Augsburg (Germany) and in the laboratories of the leading CFL manufacturers: Phillips and OSRAM. The main results are presented in [35,36,[55][56][57][58][59][60], of which [56,57,59] are purely experimental, [35,36,58] are computational, and the results of both experiments and modeling are presented in [55,60]. The gases under study were the v w v w v w components of the mixtures used in the lamps: argon [35,56,57,60] or argon with mercury vapor [36,55,58,59]; in [59], there were also neon or krypton additives.…”

Fluid Modeling of the Conversion of Methane into Higher Hydrocarbons in an Atmospheric Pressure Dielectric Barrier Discharge

“…Later the model was transformed and extended by Brok et al62 and incorporated into Plasimo. In this way the model has previously been used for investigating the breakdown phenomena in compact fluorescent lamps,62–64 the discharge characteristics of the plasma needle,65 the behavior of DBDs at low pressure,66 and the characteristics of DBDs used as ionization source in analytical spectrochemistry 67–69…”

Ac breakdown in near-atmospheric pressure noble gases: II. Simulations

“…It has been further developed for many other applications [21]. As far as lighting purposes are concerned, the extensions done for modelling of the ignition process in fluorescent tubes [24,25] were done by van Dijk and Brok. It was later used for the simulations of the breakdown process with fast-rising voltage in near-atmospheric pressure gas [20].…”