Morphological Image Analysis of Surface Dielectric Barrier Discharge at Atmospheric Air

Surface dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) has recently received growing interest for enormous application potential in various fields. In this paper, the optical observation of surface DBD is conducted by an intensified charge-coupled device camera from top view in the atmospheric air. Spacial and transient characteristics of discharge phenomenon in atmospheric pressure air have been, respectively, visualized with the exposure time of 100 ms and 5 mu s. The discharge area is obtained by calculating the number of pixels in MATLAB software at different electrical parameters and different high-voltage electrode configurations with microsecond time scale. Experimental measurements show that the diffuse discharge during the negative-half cycle has good uniformity and stability compared with filamentary discharge during the positive-half cycle. The results offer a new estimated method for the discharge area.