Quick Arc

The EMA3D® Quick Arc is a feature that will activate within a vacuum region at a specified electric field magnitude to create a PEC material at the arc location. The specified magnitude is known as the “Arc Initiation Value”. The quick arc acts only within a vacuum. The designated region may be a small section or the entire simulation problem space. Only one quick arc may be defined.

The result of the quick arc is a reduction of the electric field magnitude to zero at the activation location. However, instantaneous reduction to zero results in the manifestation of excessive amounts of numerical noise. For this reason, the reduction is manifested over a time period. The effect is realized by slowly reducing the magnitude of the associated electric field to zero. The manner of reduction is provided by the equation below.

where: n is the number of time steps since the electric field achieve the arc initiation value.

It should be realized that no physics is involved with this mechanism. It is not meant to simulate air breakdown. To simulate actual air breakdown, see Section 5.4.