Modeling the Parameters of an Atmospheric Pressure Dielectric Barrier Discharge Controlled by the Shape of the Applied Voltage

In this work, a 1-D extended fluid model is built to investigate the effects of the electric waveform supplying a dielectric barrier microdischarge plasma. Three symmetric waveforms (sine, square, and triangle) are used in this study in addition to one asymmetric waveform (positive ramp). The results of numerical experiments show that the discharge activity is strongly affected by the applied voltage waveform, where the dielectric-barrier glow discharge (DBD) in case of the sine and triangle waveforms is more filamentary (with series of narrow current density peaks) when compared with the square waveforms. Although the discharge period of the sine and triangle waveforms is high, the rms value of its current is lower than that in the case of the square waveforms.