Determination of ionization conditions characterizing the breakdown threshold of a point-plane air interval using fuzzy logic

The objective of this paper is to study the discharge phenomenon for a point-plane air interval using an original fuzzy logic system. Firstly, a physical model based on streamer theory with consideration of the space charge fields due to electrons and positive ions is proposed. To test this model we have calculated the breakdown threshold voltage for a point-plane air interval. The same model is used to determine the discharge steps for different configurations as an inference data base. Secondly, using results obtained by the numerical simulation of the previous model, we have introduced the fuzzy logic technique to predict the breakdown threshold voltage of the same configurations used in the numerical model and make estimation on the insulating state of the air interval. From the comparison of obtained results, we can conclude that they are in accordance with the experimental ones obtained for breakdown discharges in different point-plane air gaps collected from the literature. The proposed study using fuzzy logic technique shows a good performance in the analysis of different discharge steps of the air interval.

• We predict the discharge steps in a point-plane air gap using fuzzy logic system.
• We assign to each step an interval of values indicated by the streamer criterion.
• We construct the inference table to give the electrical discharge steps as output.
• We compare the obtained results of simulation with practice data.
• fuzzy logic is simple and efficient technique to predict the electrical discharge.