Abstract:
This thesis presents a study of positive and negative lightning impulse breakdown voltage characteristics of sphere-plane gaps, under laboratory atmospheric conditions, with and without UV irradiation. The results show that the positive impulse breakdown voltage of sphere-plane gap without UV irradiation is higher than with UV irradiation, while the UV irradiation has only a slight affect on negative impulse breakdown voltage. The positive breakdown voltage with and without UV irradiation are always higher than the negative impulse breakdown voltage.