Calculation of ion flow environment of DC transmission lines in the presence of charged aerosol particulates based on upwind-FEM

•The solving algorithm for ion flow model in the presence of aerosol particulates is proposed.•The ion-aerosol attachment coefficients are calculated by Fuchs theory.•Application of the proposed approach to calculate monopolar and bipolar DC line.•The charged particulate has a significant influence on the spatial distributions of charge density. Atmospheric environment has a significant influence on ion current, space charge and ground-level electric field profiles of HVDC transmission lines, which attracts a huge amount of interest already. This work presents that the upwind finite element method is applied to calculate the ion flow model in the presence of aerosol particulates. The ion-aerosol attachment coefficient, electrical mobility and diffusion coefficient of charged aerosol are calculated by Fuchs theory and Stokes–Einstein relation. Application of the proposed approach to calculate monopolar and bipolar DC line provides an insight into the physical mechanism of effect of aerosol. Making some appropriate assumptions, computational results present a reasonable agreement with the long-term measured data within a certain aerosol density. It is found that aerosol has a significant influence on the spatial distributions of charge density. In the downwind direction, the ground-level electric field increases significantly because of the dominant of charged aerosol particles.