An implicit three-dimensional fractional step method for the simulation of the corona phenomenon

The modeling of the corona effect has many technological applications especially in the power industry. The reduction of the computational burden of three dimensional simulations is a key factor in this area. Stability requirements may impose unacceptable constraints in three dimensions leading to huge computational costs. In this paper we develop an effective time-splitting method that remains stable and positive even when relatively large time steps and coarse meshes are used. We analyze the theoretical properties of the method and validate our approach against already published experimental data.