Similarity law for electrical breakdown in air-ethylene

The similarity law for electrical discharges describes how different systems can exhibit similar discharge behavior when their dimensions are appropriately scaled. In this work, we attempt to assess the validity of the similarity law when complex, highly nonlinear plasma reactions are accounted for in an air-ethylene plasma model. We focus only on air-ethylene mixture modeled in zero-dimension using ZDPlasKin. The simulations show that the similarity law for breakdown remains largely satisfied over the wide domain explored (similarity factors between 0.02 and 100 and pressures from 0.05 to 250 atm), which indicates that linear processes remain dominant in terms of similarity law. Extended study looking at partially scaled systems (keeping the frequency constant) also shows overall good agreement with the similarity law, despite some differences.