Numerical Simulation of Streamer Propagation in Atmospheric Air using Adaptive Mesh Refinement Method

Research on streamer discharges has long been conducted, mainly to elucidate dielectric breakdown phenomena. However, the streamer propagation is extremely fast, making it difficult to obtain sufficient spatiotemporal resolution in experimental measurements. Thus, simulation is evidently useful, but the electric field at the streamer head is so high during propagation that the calculations require a mesh with element sizes on the order of a few micrometers. Reducing the model scale has become a critical challenge. In this paper, we present an adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) approach and demonstrate its application to streamer propagation simulation in atmospheric air. Its effectiveness is evaluated by comparing it with conventional calculation methods.