Peculiarities of the slow ion flow movement in the near-anode region of a high-current vacuum arc

Abstract

A one-dimensional model of the quasi-stationary vacuum arc is considered in terms of a four-flow hydrodynamics approximation. The presented model allows calculating kinetics of evaporated atom volume ionization and distribution of the main parameters characterizing each flow over the interelectrode gap.Index Terms-Electron energy balance, mathematical simulation, 1-D four-flow hydrodynamic model, vacuum arc.

Shock front formation at vacuum arc anodes

“…Near the anode surface they are neutrals, but soon they are ionized. As in previous works 14,20,21 we neglect for simplicity the stage when they are neutrals and assume that they come in the interelectrode gap as ions at the initial time, tϭ0, for the present problem. Plasma emission from the cathode surface is assumed to remain constant.…”

Supersonic plasma flow near a point charge

“…when the plasma jet has a supersonic drift velocity, two kinds of collisions must be distinguished: (1) collisions between the jet ions, that have only thermal relative velocities, and (2) collisions between the jet ions and stationary charged targets or charged particles in a stationary plasma cloud. In the first case, the ion-ion cross-section is, as described above, with the thermal velocity determining the cross-section, while for the second case, the cross-section σ and the collision frequency ν are determined by the jet drift velocity v jet [2][3][4][5]:…”