Eur. Phys. J. D 28, 91-99 (2004)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2003-00285-3

Application of Blanc's law at arbitrary electric field to gas density ratios

¹ Institute of Physics, P.O. Box 68, 11080 Zemun, Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro
² Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro

Corresponding author: ^a vrhovac@phy.bg.ac.yu

Received: 2 July 2003
Published online: 14 October 2003

Abstract

Application of Blanc's law for drift velocities of electrons and ions in gas mixtures at arbitrary reduced electric field strengths was studied theoretically and by numerical examples. Corrections for Blanc's law that include effects of inelastic collisions were derived. In addition we have derived the common mean energy procedure that was proposed by Chiflikyan in a general case both for ions and electrons. Both corrected common and common mean energy procedures provide excellent results even for electrons at moderate where application of Blanc's law was regarded as impossible. In mixtures of two gases that have negative differential conductivity (NDC) even when neither of the two pure gases show NDC the Blanc's law procedure was able to give excellent predictions.