CORONA DISCHARGE FROM LIGHTNING RODS IN CONDITIONS OF ACTION OF STRONG ELECTRIC FIELD

Abstract

INTRODUCTION The necessity to increase reliability of lightning protection gave rise to the idea of creation of lightning rods of new types that realize the mechanism of Early Streamer Emission (ESE), called “ESE terminals” or “active” lightning rods. They are to provide the faster creation of a counter leader for lightning, compared to a usual lightning rod. The present market of devices of protection of buildings and structures against lightning strike is quickly filled with such specimens of lightning rods. Among manufacturers of ESE terminals there are world-famous companies in the lightning protection area. Advertising prospectuses placed at sites of such companies announce very attractive technical characteristics of these devices that provide protection zones many times larger than the usual lightning rods. According to information from the site of The International Lightning Protection Association (http://www.intlpa.org/about-us/) as at 2018, more than 680 thousand of such devices had been installed in the world. To use the modern devices in the practice of lightning protection, it is necessary to have confidence that properties announced by a manufacturer correspond to the facts. Quality control is proposed to perform by the procedure regulated by France standard NF 17-102:2011 1 . However, this standard is recognized, besides France, in Spain, Argentina, Lithuania and some other countries. World scientific community including such distinguished scientists in the area of lightning physics as M.A. Uman 2 , V.A. Rakov, V. Cooray, M. Becerra 3 , E. Bazelyan and others consider the points of this standard to be insufficiently substantiated because the trustworthiness of the proposed method has not been proved by