Abstract:
We investigated the discharge channel optical images of surface flashover on insulator under pulsed voltage in air. The CCD camera was used to diagnose the flashover characteristics of PMMA with finger electrodes in air. The experiments show that discharges occurred in both cathode region and anode region in channel forming and expansion stage. The velocity of channel forming was fast in 15 ns. The channel region kept on expanding with high luminous intensity and the whole discharge lasted more than 1 μs. Next, we would analyse the flashover physical process in air based on the discharge channel optical images.