Modelling of a pulsed argon discharge near a flat dielectric surface

Although there is experimental evidence pointing towards the importance of surface processes in discharge propagation across dielectric surfaces, there has been little modelling effort to test these findings. This paper shows the level of importance of surface processes. A 2D fluid model was used to describe a breakdown in 700 mbar argon in the vicinity of a dielectric surface. The results show that the part of the discharge that propagates through the gas volume is well described by the model, while the behaviour of the surface discharge greatly differs from that observed in the experiments. We conclude that bulk processes alone cannot describe the discharge propagation in the vicinity of a dielectric surface.