Predicting the electrostatic charging behavior of insulating materials without charging tests

It is well known that experiments of charging and later discharging of materials with gas ignition probes or hand-coulombmeters show that some insulating materials do exist that cannot be hazardously charged by manual rubbing in spite of their high surface resistance. In this work, effects of variations of physical and chemical properties as well as the structure of these materials have been systematically investigated. The results obtained help to explain this behavior and propose approaches to predict the charging behavior of such insulating materials without any charging test at all.