Research on lightning impulse voltage discharge characteristics of electromagnetic metamaterials
Introduction
Electromagnetic metamaterials were known as new artificial electromagnetic materials and new artificial electromagnetic media [1], were first systematically proposed by Veselago [2]. The preparation of electromagnetic metamaterials is obtained by chemically embedding single-layer or multi-layer artificial metallic microstructure unit arrays into insulating dielectric substrates, which usually have extraordinary electromagnetic characteristics([[3], [4], [5]]), showing excellent properties such as negative dielectric constant, negative magnetic permeability, negative refractive index, high in-band transmittance, strong out-of-band cutoff ability, good frequency characteristicsand other excellent properties make it more and more widely used in the field of aircraft radar radome([[6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]]).
Electromagnetic metamaterials contain metallic microstructure units inside, they are easy to become the initial attachment area of lightning ([14,15]). However, there are few reports about the lightning protection of electromagnetic metamaterials, and the interaction mechanism between lightning and metamaterial radome is not clear.
The process of lightning strike on electromagnetic metamaterial radome in lightning environment can be simulated as needle electrode electromagnetic metamaterial radome equivalent plate antenna model. For the study of the rod-plate electrode model, Kristian M H et al. [16] studied the lightning impulse breakdown mechanism of short rod-plane air gap with dielectric barrier layers using a high-speed camera, photomultiplier tube and current measurement system. Some researchers have also carried out relevant studies on the development characteristics of streamer with different polarities and the initial field strength in the streamer channel for long air gaps ([[17], [18], [19], [20], [21]]).
The electromagnetic metamaterial radome contains a large number of metallic microstructures, and its electromagnetic characteristics are different from those of insulating dielectric substrates. In this paper, we use the electromagnetic metamaterial to carry out the combined gap lightning impulse voltage discharge characteristics test, and adopt a high-speed camera to record the streamer development process of the space gap. In addition, we further adopt simulation model to explore the influence of metal microstructure units on the spatial electric field distribution. This study helps to understand the interaction mechanism between lightning and metamaterial radome and the attachment characteristics of lightning in the radome, and it is important for the lightning protection research of electromagnetic metamaterial radome.
Section snippets
Metamaterial and sample preparation
The size of the electromagnetic metamaterial microstructure unit is 4mm × 4 mm and the distance between two adjacent microstructure units is 1 mm. In addition, the size of the whole electromagnetic metamaterial plate used in the test is 500 mm × 500 mm. The crisscross electromagnetic metamaterial which is embedded in the FR-4 epoxy resin board by electroplating and printing is based on epoxy resin, and the material that forms the microstructure unit on the metamaterial surface is copper. Due to
Experimental results
The lightning impulse 50% breakdown voltage of electromagnetic metamaterials under positive and negative polarity are 431.1 kV and 628.9 kV respectively. And the corresponding voltage waveforms are shown in Fig. 3. We have conducted 80 times impulse voltage test on the single-layer electromagnetic metamaterial plate, of which the positive polarity has been tested 40 times and the negative polarity has been tested 40 times.The combined gap under needle plate electrode belongs to extremely uneven
Simulation
The experimental results show that the self-discharge phenomenon and even the upward connection streamer will occur on the surface of the electromagnetic metamaterials before the downward leader of lightning establishes a stable lightning channel. The spatial gap electric field distribution of electromagnetic metamaterials is distorted, which makes the electric field distribution different from that of traditional ordinary compound material. The induced electric field of lightning is an
Conclusion
The combined gap lightning impulse test of the equivalent plate of electromagnetic metamaterial radome is carried out in experiment. High-speed camera was used to analysis the streamer development process. In addtion, we carry out simulation to verify our experiment. The main conclusions as follows:
The discharge process of the electromagnetic metamaterial radome can be divided into two parts: the air gap discharge between the high voltage electrode and the metamaterial radome and the surface
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This work of this paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 51807144. The authors hereby express their gratitude to the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, which helped the authors considerably improve this paper.
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