Calculation of the interruption Process of a self-blast circuit breaker

Because the physics occurring during an interruption process is not well known, it is not easy to analyze the characteristics of a self-blast circuit breaker neither theoretically nor experimentally. Fortunately, the available computational power and the numerical method improved recently made it possible to predict an interruption process as precisely and fast as possible. Therefore many researches using computational methods have been done for the interruption process of interrupters and applied to extend the information such as thermal and dielectric reignition. In this paper, we have simulated the interruption process of SF₆ self-blast circuit breakers with the arc plasma during the fault interruption of a 10-kA current. The computational fluid dynamics program used here is coupled with the electromagnetic field analysis, the radiation model, and the effects of turbulence. Through this work, we have obtained further information about the thermal performance as well as the behavior of the arc. The results have been compared with the measured arc voltage.