Study On Numerical Methods Of DC Atmosphere Glow Discharge

DC atmosphere glow discharge is a type of discharge which develops quickly in recent years. It has many characteristics which bring it more significantly to be researched. However, because of lacking effective diagnosis method, the relative theory and numerical simulation are in initial stage. The physical process of glow Discharge is still not very clear. People are still confused by the select of the parameters in the discharge. Besides, it cost a lot to make experimentation due to the vacuum equipment is expensive. All of these will cause negative effect on the theory research of glow discharge and its application in the industrial field.As various models and large numbers of numerical algorithms are proposed recently, the numerical simulation of glow discharge is greatly valued by scholars. Therefore, it gets essential to adopt an appropriate method according to the theory of discharge as well as the characteristic of the numerical methods.The model of DC atmosphere glow discharge belongs to a typical nonlinear partial differential equation set, with the variables coupled intensively. It is very difficult to obtain the analytic solution. In addition, there is a great difference of quality magnitude between the electronic and the ion. Accordingly, the stiff problems will occur in the simulation. Moreover, partials are transferred more than to be diffused, which will lead to the Re number getting very big. In this case, the numerical method should be selected strictly to satisfy the requests of accuracy and stability.In this article, the finite volume method,the upwind scheme,the Crank-Nicholson scheme and the characteristic difference method-four typical schemes are selected to solve the problem. The intrinsic property of these methods has been analyzed, proved and concluded respectively. It is a great pity that just the stable conditions on the mass equation of the electron are presented, because stability proof related to schemes of nonlinear equation is so complex that it has not been solved yet. Thus, the stability proof on the mass equation of ion and the energy equation of electron are expected to be resolved for the further research. At the same time, the boundary conditions frequently used in glow discharge are summarized. Some useful conclusions are reached by numerical experiment.The conclusions obtained in this paper can be significantly applied on other kinds of discharge similarly and are available in plasma physics.