Experimental investigation of the streamer guiding field in SF6 under positive and negative polarity

In spite of the great number of studies, there is a disagreement to the existence and consequently to the value of the electric field in the streamer channel in SF₆. In this paper, three experimental methods are proposed to determinate the streamer guiding field under positive and negative polarity. The considerable amount of experimental data leads to the conclusion that the value of the streamer guiding field (average geometrical field in the corona region) under positive and negative polarity, is about 40 kVcm^-1 at atmospheric pressure. This result is very important for a great number of industrial applications using SF₆