A computationally efficient fluid model for atmospheric pressure plasma jet simulation using a spherical charge approximation

The paper presents a novel approach for the simulation of atmospheric pressure plasma jets, based on the fluid model under the drift-diffusion approximation. The novelty lies in the approximation of the local electric field along the ionization wave propagation path as the combined field of multiple superposed spherical charges. This approximation alleviates the need for the solution of the Poisson equation for the electric potential by utilizing the simple relation for the electric field of a uniform spherical charge. With this approach, the drift-diffusion model can be reduced to a one-dimensional approximation, while the electric field remains three-dimensional. The main benefit of this model is the significant reduction of the computational cost, making it an effective testbed for plasma chemistry sets and a very efficient method for fully coupled plasma-fluid dynamics solvers. To assess the accuracy of the proposed model, we compare simulations of the speed of the ionization wave front and the spatiotemporal evolution of various species, against experimental reference data.