Experimental study of vacuum surface flashover based on magnetic flashover inhibition

Surface flashover in vacuum is a penetrability discharge phenomenon which occurs at the vacuum-insulator interface. One of the effective ways to increase the surface flashover voltage is magnetic flashover inhibition. In this work， a series of experiments were carried out to find out the relationships between applied magnetic field and surface flashover voltage. The experimental results show that the surface flashover voltage of PMMA can be increased up to 1.8 times by applying a magnetic field of 1.1 T which is perpendicular to the electric field and parallel to the insulator surface.