Analysis of soil impulse discharge characteristics based on optical‐electrical synchronous observation.

The impulse performance of grounding electrodes highly depends on soil impulse discharge characteristics. The analysis of soil discharge dynamic process images is helpful to understand the impulse discharge mechanism of grounding electrodes. This paper designed an optical‐electrical synchronous observation platform for simulate soil (SiO2 crystal) discharge, and discharge dynamic process images is obtained by high‐speed camera. Through analysing breakdown delay time and thermal power before breakdown, it is found that soil impulse discharge is mainly an electrical breakdown process, and soil ionization intensity is positively correlated with the light intensity emitted by whole soil sample in breakdown channel development stage. The time from voltage application to the occurrence of ionization is defined as initial ionization delay time (IIDT). Using image processing technology, the change curve of optical image average grayscale value with time in the process of soil discharge is obtained, and a calculation method of IIDT is proposed by comparing the difference between average grayscale value curve and background image average grayscale value. Experiment results show that IIDT is negatively correlated with impulse voltage, particle size and water content, but not with salt content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]