Physical aspects of a selfblast generator circuit breaker for currents up to 190 kA

Summary form only given, as follows. Selfblast circuit breakers in the medium- and high voltage levels exploit the energy injected into the switching arc to generate the blast pressure which is necessary to extinguish the switching arc at zero current. This amount of energy which normally is provided by the drive can significantly be reduced with the well-known selfblast principle. The scope of this paper is to describe the physical background of this new selfblast circuit breaker and how the application of modern simulation tools together with basic experiments were applied to develop a new product.