Study of the Influence of Arc Ignition Position on Arc Motion in Low-Voltage Circuit Breaker

Author

Li, Xingwen ; Chen, Degui ; Dai, Ruicheng ; Geng, Yingsan

Author_Institution

State Key Lab. of Electr. Insulation & Power Equip., Xi´´an Jiaotong Univ.

Volume

35

Issue

2

fYear

2007

fDate

4/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

491

Lastpage

497

Abstract

Arc-motion process is crucial to the interruption capability of the low-voltage circuit breaker. First, to a simplified chamber with full open venting, with a 2-D optical-fiber arc-motion measurement system, experiments were done to measure the arc-motion velocity in order to analyze the influence of different arc ignition position on the arc motion. It demonstrates that the larger the volume behind the arc is, the slower the arc moves. In addition, the influence of the gassing material on arc-motion velocity was also studied experimentally. Then, the commercial computational fluid dynamics software FLUENT was adapted and modified to develop a 2-D magneto-hydrodynamic model of the arc with the same conditions as the experimental model. The simulation result was consistent with the experiment conclusions

Keywords

arcs (electric); circuit breakers; computational fluid dynamics; plasma diagnostics; plasma magnetohydrodynamics; plasma simulation; plasma transport processes; 2D magnetohydrodynamic model; 2D optical-fiber arc-motion measurement; FLUENT software; arc ignition position; computational fluid dynamics; gassing material; low-voltage circuit breaker; Circuit breakers; Computational fluid dynamics; Ignition; Magnetic materials; Magnetohydrodynamics; Motion analysis; Motion measurement; Optical materials; Position measurement; Velocity measurement; Arc motion; circuit breaker; gassing material; magneto-hydrodynamic;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Plasma Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0093-3813

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TPS.2007.892579

Filename

4154879