Barriers to flashover discharge arcs on Teflon

The effect of various barriers (empty gap, copper, Mylar, and nickel mesh) on the probability of simultaneous arc discharging of two physically separated pieces of electron-beam-charged Teflon was studied. For the empty gap barrier, it was found that simultaneous discharges rarely occur when the separation between the samples is greater than approximately 0.4 times the length of their common edge when this length is of the order of 1 cm. Evidence suggests that electromagnetic fields play a larger role than electrons in influencing the occurrence of simultaneous arc discharges.