Re: Streamer simulation

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz" <acmq-at-compuland-dot-com.br> 

Tesla list wrote:
 >
 > Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>
 >
 > I don't know that a fractal model is optimum (streamer development isn't
 > scale independent, like fractals are), but some sort of cellular automata
 > model might be...

Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 34 (2001) 936-946.
"Simulation of breakdown in air using cellular automata with streamer
to leader transition".
Has nice plots of simulated streamers. The references mention several
papers about the fractal nature of streamers.

 > Essentially, you've got chunks of air that are in one of three states...
 > nothing, streamer growing, and streamer fully formed, and then they get
 > connected in an essentially random (tree structured) way.  The physics
 > going on at the tip of the streamer is pretty much the same, whether it's
 > at the end of a 10cm streamer or a 1m streamer.  Likewise, what's going on
 > inside the developed streamer is essentially the same regardless of where
 > along the streamer it is.

The idea in the paper appears to be similar.

Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz