Materials Today: Proceedings 24 (2020) 160–165

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Electrical modelling of homogeneous and filamentary dielectric barrier

discharge at atmospheric pressure
Abdelhamid Laiadi a,⇑, Abdellah Chentouf a, Youssef Laghmich b
a
Applied Physics Laboratory, Physics Department, Faculty of Science and Technology, Tangier, Morocco
b
Laboratory of Science and Advanced Technology, Physics Department, Polydisciplinary Faculty, Larache, Morocco

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: An electrical model of Dielectric Barrier Discharge (DBD) is proposed to model the homogeneous and
Received 30 May 2019 filamentary discharge. In the first part, for the homogeneous discharge, an equivalent circuit based on
Received in revised form 17 October 2019 the electrical behaviour of DBD is studied. The discharge current and the gap voltage signals are given
Accepted 18 October 2019
as a result of model simulation. The analysis of charge transfer has been carried out by means of
Available online 13 November 2019
Lissajous figures, and the dynamic of the discharge is depicted by the discharge characteristic. In the sec-
ond part, for the filamentary discharge, the randomness of streamers breakdowns and the high frequency
Keywords:
of the current pulses have been modelled based on a statistical study of breakdowns distribution. The
Cold Plasma
Electrical discharge model
results of the simulation for the two modes of discharge will be compared to the experimental outcomes.
Dielectric Barrier Discharge Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Homogeneous discharge Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International
Filamentary discharge Conference on Plasma and Energy Materials ICPEM2019.

1. Introduction source and a resistance. The transition from a Townsend to fila-

Dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) is considered as the most
effective way to generate cold plasma in the laboratory. Recently,
DBD has known many applications in the domain of medicine
[1], environment [2], and industry [3].DBD discharge, also known
as silent discharge, can be obtained when at least one dielectric
is used near the electrodes to prevent the formation of an electric
arc. The numerical models of DBD discharge existing in the litera-
ture are based on the kinetic and fluid models, all of them require a
lot of calculation resources and are time-consuming. However, and
for the sake of understanding the electrical behaviour of the dis-
charge, the DBD device can be modelled as an equivalent circuit
with an applied voltage and an arrangement of capacitors. Each
capacitor models the gap of the gas space and the dielectric capac-
itances. The electrical model would provide the discharge current
and the gas gap voltage signals which are unattainable to measure
directly during the discharge, and would be as well used to esti-
mate the transfer of power, the design of impedance matching
and the choice of applied power sources.
The basic electrical models for the homogeneous discharge [4–
6] model the plasma current conduction by a controlled current
⇑ Corresponding author at: Physics Department, Faculty of science and
technology, B.P.416 Tangier, Morocco.
E-mail address: a.laiadi@uae.ac.ma (A. Laiadi).
mentary discharge has been studied by Massines et al. [7] using
two Zener diodes. For the filamentary discharge electric models
[8–12] the current discharge pulses are modelled using micro-
discharge canals of variable resistance network, a high-frequency
signal generator, multiple switches, and a switch of high-
frequency alternation. In contrast to the work of Fuentes et al.
[13] who have expressed the current discharge based on the power
law, in this article the discharge current expression is deduced
from the dynamic equations of the presented model.
Our work aims to provide a flexible equivalent circuit of DBD
discharge for the two-mode of discharge, taking into consideration
the experimental values of the discharge experiment carried out by
[14]. The gas used is air at atmospheric pressure with alumina
(Kyocera A473) and soda-glass dielectrics. The homogeneous dis-
charge model is expressed by the equations of discharge, and the
distribution of breakdowns for the filamentary discharge is taken
into consideration.
2. Analysis of the equivalent circuit
The process of DBD discharge could be divided into two stages:
the stage of pre-discharge, which took place before the breakdown;
the equivalent circuit in this case, can be simply modelled as an
arrangement of capacitors in a serial connection as depicted in
Fig. 1(a), where Cd and Cg represent the dielectric and the gas

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2019.10.112
2214-7853/Ó 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Plasma and Energy Materials ICPEM2019.
 A. Laiadi et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings 24 (2020) 160–165
Fig. 1. Equivalent electrical circuit of the DBD: (a) before discharge; (b) during discharge.
gap capacitance, respectively. The discharge occurs when the
applied voltage exceeds the breakdown voltage. In this stage, the
equivalent DBD circuit can be modelled as shown in Fig. 1(b)
where the resistance Rf simulates the current conduction of plasma
and the variable capacitor Cg models the variation of the permittiv-
ity of the gas during the discharge [15].
By applying the laws of Kirchhoff on the circuits in Fig. 1(a) and
(b) we can conclude the following equations [5]:
dV d ðtÞ
iðt Þ ¼ id ðtÞ ¼ C d
dt
dV g
ig ðtÞ ¼ C g ¼ iðt Þ  iccs ðt Þ
dt
V ðt Þ ¼ V g ðt Þ þ V d ðtÞ
where i(t), id(t) and ig(t) are the total current, the displacement cur-
rent, and the discharge current, respectively.
From the previous equations we conclude that the expression of
the discharge current is:


Cg dV ðtÞ
iccs ðt Þ ¼ 1þ iðt Þ  C g
Cg dt
The current discharge can be modelled as a controlled current
source as presented in the Eq. (4). One can see that the total current
is composed of discharge current and displacement current, and it
is noted too that the current depends on the applied voltage. The
electrical circuit and its dynamic equations are valid for the homo-
geneous and filamentary discharge discussed below.
3. Homogeneous discharge
3.1. Electric simulation model
Based on the proposed circuit and the considerations of the
experiment, an electrical simulation model was implemented into
Simulink /Matlab as represented in Fig. 2. The discharge is con-
trolled by a block control, which ignites and block the discharge
by means of two ideal switches IS1 and IS2. The pulse generator
generates a rectangle signal of 100 Hz frequency, is in the active
state between the instant of breakdown and the instant of the
maximum of applied voltage [13]. The barrier dielectric used is
the alumina (Kyocera A473), its size and thickness are 100 cm2
161
and 1 mm, respectively. The electrode material is aluminium, its
size and thickness are 64 cm2 and 0.1 mm, respectively.
The electrical circuits elements are the same as in the experi-
mental ones [14], the capacitances Cg and Cd found was calculated
considering the rectangular planar geometry of the capacitors (5)
and (6), and their values are 44.27 pF and 400 pF, respectively.
e0 eg Sg
Cg ¼ ð5Þ
lg
ð1Þ
e0 ed Sg
Cd ¼ ð6Þ
ld
ð2Þ where e0 is the permittivity of vacuum, eg is the permittivity of the
gas, ed is the permittivity of the dielectric barrier, Sg is the area of
ð3Þ the electrodes, Sd is the area of the dielectric barrier, and lg is the
gas gap distance, and ld is the thickness of the dielectric barrier.
The breakdown electric field value for the air gas is 3.2 kV/ mm
at atmospheric pressure, the instant of breakdown found is
0.92 ms, the alternation between the pre-discharge and discharge
circuits is assured by means of the switches IS1 and IS2 controlled
by the pulse generator. The changing of the value of permittivity of
ð4Þ the gas is assured by dividing the gas gap capacitor into two capac-
itors: Cg1, Cg2 and Rd whose values are calculated for the purpose to
obtain the optimal similitude with the experimental results, the
values found are 0.4Cg, 0.6Cg and 100 kO, respectively. The R resis-
tor and L inductance are used to model the resistivity and induc-
tion effects of wires and are 100 O and 0.5 mH, respectively.
3.2. Results and discussion
3.2.1. Current discharge and gap voltage
The sinusoidal applied voltage has 11 kV peak-to-peak value
and 50 Hz frequency. The breakdown Electric field of the air is
6.4 kV/2 mm.
The simulated results of the discharge current presented in
Fig. 3 support those of the experimental results [14], where we
can see: one current pulse per half cycle occurred-emphasizing
that the discharge is homogeneous-a sharp rise and fall has been
detected near 1 and 10 ms which indicates the instantaneous
breakdown in the gap, the current flows 90° earlier than the
applied voltage. The gap voltage wave form depicted in Fig. 4
remains almost constant once the discharge begins, and has a
phase shift with the applied voltage. The sharp fall and rise of
162 A. Laiadi et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings 24 (2020) 160–165

Fig. 2. Electrical model of the DBD circuit in Simulink.

Fig. 3. Simulation results: the discharge current.

Fig. 4. Simulation results: The waveform of gap voltage.

Fig. 5. Average power consumption vs frequency.

the current near 3 ms and 13 ms are due to the side effect of
switches conductions.
The electric model may be used for power estimation. The con- The power discharge is obtained from the product of discharge
sumption power is calculated as indicated in the equation (7): current and gap voltage, it indicates how much power is trans-
Z T ferred to the reactor during the discharge. The Fig. 5 shows that
1
P¼ V g ðt Þiccs ðt Þ ð7Þ the discharge power increases as the voltage increases and
T 0
decreases as the frequency increases.
 A. Laiadi et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings 24 (2020) 160–165
Fig. 6. Lissajous figure for the charge transfer.
Fig. 7. Characteristic of discharge.
3.2.2. Lissajous figures
The Lissajous figures are obtained by means of the capacitor Ct
with a capacitance of 10 nF, the form of Lissajous figure is near par-
allelogram as demonstrated in Fig. 6, which is in accord with the
previous works [16–17]. According to Manley [18], the surface of
Lissajous figure indicates the discharge power transferred between
the electrodes during the discharge. The transfer power is propor-
tional to the amount of charge transfer from the cathode into the
anode, which was measured by the light measurements in the
experiment. The form of Lissajous figures obtained is in accord
with the light measurement results of the discharge [14].
3.2.3. Characteristics of discharge
The characteristic of discharge provides the dynamic behavior
of the discharge. The curve of characteristic – obtained from the
electric model – shown in Fig. 7 is composed of two loops linked
by two lines, each one corresponds to one cycle. The breakdown
occurs when Vg rises to point A, after which the current rises shar-
ply and Vg rises slightly until point B, after which the current rises
slightly and Vg decrease sharply. The discharge stops at point D.
Comparing the results of this characteristic with the standard
discharge characteristic, one can conclude that the discharge
between point A and B is Townsend discharge mode, and between
point B and C, the discharge is glow discharge mode.
4. Filamentary discharge
4.1. Electrical model
With a view to model the filamentary behaviour of the dis-
charge occurring when the soda-glass dielectric was added in the
second part of the experiment [14], the equivalent dielectric capac-
itor in the circuit model turns into a serial arrangement of alumina
and soda-glass capacitors of 400 pF and 538.62 pF capacitance,
163
respectively. The value of the equivalent dielectric capacitance is
229.53 pF. The permittivity of soda-glass is 7.3 at 1 MHz [19].
Fig. 8(a) describes the simulation model implementation in
Simulink/Matlab. A filamentary block has been added to the previ-
ous homogeneous circuit model, the block components are repre-
sented in Fig. 8(b). The high-frequency sine wave of 100 kHz
simulates the high occurrences of streamers, and the pulse gener-
ator role is to activate the bloc solely for the negative alternation of
applied voltage. Since the filamentary discharge is created by
streamer avalanche, which is a random phenomenon in space
and time, the random generator creates a random signal of normal
distribution in order to simulate the stochastic process of filamen-
tary discharge and the distributions of breakdowns [20]. The mean
and the variance parameters of the normal distribution are chosen
in order to obtain a better accordance with the experimental cur-
rent waveform signal, and are 1 and 0.1, respectively.
4.2. Results and discussion
It is noted that in the first half cycle the discharge was homoge-
neous, which is characterized by the one pulse of current, and dur-
ing the second half cycle, the discharge turns into filamentary
mode, which is characterized by the fluctuation of current in
Fig. 9. The changes in the behaviour of the discharge current in
each alternation may stem from the high level of ionisation near
the soda glass, which explains its use in filamentary discharge
applications. The simulated results (Fig. 9) are in good agreement
with the experimental results [14].
The model prove its flexibility for representing the two modes
of discharges, and its capability to model the transition from the
homogeneous discharge to the filamentary discharge. It should
be noted that the electrical model would be valid for other config-
urations, and can support the discharge current expressed by
power law [12] instead of the equation of the discharge (4).
164 A. Laiadi et al. / Materials Today: Proceedings 24 (2020) 160–165

Fig. 8. (a) Simulink model for filamentary discharge, (b) Filamentary bloc components.

in accord with the experimental results. The dynamic of the dis-

charge has been depicted with the aid of discharge characteristics,
which coincides with the homogeneous discharge regime results.
The charge transfer has been estimated by means of Lissajous fig-
ures, indicates the accordance with the experimental light mea-
surements. The filamentary mode, due to its stochastic nature
has been modelled taking into account the statistical parameters
of its distribution.

Declaration of Competing Interest

There is no conflict of interest.

Fig. 9. Simulation results of the discharge current for filamentary discharge.

Acknowledgements
5. Conclusion
The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their sugges-
tions and fruitful discussion .
In this paper, we have presented an electric model of the DBD
for the two modes of discharge. The basic electrical model can be
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