Investigation of SLF Interruption Capability of Gas Circuit Breaker with CFD and a Mathematical Arc Model

Abstract

This paper discusses the analysis of arc conductance in a gas circuit breaker (GCB) during current interruption process and the investigation method of the interruption capability. There are some limitations in the application of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) for the implementation of an arc model around the current zero, despite the fact that it gives good results for the high-current phase arc. In this study, we improved the accuracy in the analysis of the interruption performance by attempting the method using CFD and a mathematical arc model. The arc conductance at 200 ns before current zero (G-200ns) is selected as the indicator to predict the current interruption of the Short Line Fault (SLF). Finally, the proposed method is verified by applying to the actual circuit breakers which have different interruption performances.