LAUSR

The time interval between pulses is the key parameter of sound synthesis generated by repetitive nanosecond pulse discharge. In this paper, the experimental studies on repetitive nanosecond pulse discharges at different intervals using a pin–pin electrode were carried out and the time-domain sound waveforms were obtained using a capacitor microphone. The experiment results show that a single pulse discharge with a FWHM (full width at half maxima) of 6 ns can produce a pulse sound with a much wider FWHM of 16 μs because of thermal inertia. Based on this measured waveform of the sound pressure and the burst modulation method, the time interval between the repetitive pulses for a better synthesis of 100 Hz sound was theoretically determined to be shorter than 15 μs. However, it was experimentally found that this theoretically determined time interval is too short for the gas to recover its insulating ability from the previous pulse discharge. The energy deposited into the discharge and the sound pressure generated by the following pulses are greatly reduced. The experimental synthetic sound is considerably lower than the theoretical one.