INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS OF HIGH-VOLTAGE, MEDIUM-VOLTAGE AND LOW-VOLTAGE ARC MODELING

A hydrodynamic model for electrical are modelling, which takes into ac count Joule heating, radiation, Lorentz forces, arc-wall interactions and real-gas effects, was applied to study high-, medium- and low-volt age circuit breakers. The first industrial application deals with a hi gh-voltage puffer circuit breaker. Ablation of the nozzle material in this kind of circuit breaker has been studied with the model. The seco nd industrial application presents an SF6 self-blast medium-voltage ci rcuit breaker, based on the combination of thermal expansion and the a re-rotation principle. The temperature between the contacts just after the current zero has been evaluated experimentally and numerically. T he comparison between these results is discussed. Lastly, the are comm utation in a low-voltage circuit, breaker has been simulated. The resu lts show that, in this type of experimental set-up, the interaction am ong the electrical are, the flow and the Lorentz force is preponderant .