Numerical investigation on behaviour of ablation arcs confined with different polymer materials

Numerical simulation was made for an arc plasma confined with different polymer materials to investigate influence of polymer ablation on the behavior of the arc plasma. Polymer ablation phenomena are nowadays crucial for the interruption ability of downsized low-voltage and high-voltage circuit breaker design. In this work, a two-dimensional thermofluid model of an arc plasma was developed taking account of mass and energy exchanges due to polymer ablation without empirical parameters. Using this model, we calculated influence of ablation on the gas flow and temperature fields for different polymer materials. The resultant arc volt-age was also compared among different polymer materials.