Numerical simulation of atmospheric-pressure surface dielectric barrier discharge on a curved dielectric with a curvilinear mesh

Abstract A numerical simulation method for atmospheric-pressure surface dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) is presented using a structured curvilinear mesh that is fitted to a curved dielectric surface. The numerical method is based on the plasma fluid model with general coordinate transformation, which is widely used in the field of the computational fluid dynamics. The calculations of a potential distribution formed by a line electrode and a planar surface DBD are performed to confirm the validity of the proposed method. We conducted numerical simulations of the DBD on a wavy surface using the proposed method to investigate the characteristics of the DBD on a curved surface. The propagation velocity of the discharge front and the electric field strength of the discharge front changed depending on the surface shape. The proposed method enables the calculation of the DBD on a complex surface and widens the application range of the numerical simulation in the field of discharge physics.