This paper is devoted to simulate the arc movement in the quenching chamber of the low-voltage circuit breaker. Based on a group of governing equations, a three-dimensional (3-D) arc model is built and solved by a modified commercial code. According to the simulated results, some phenomena such as a 'bulge' in front of the arc column, a tail in the rear of the arc column, arc shrinkage near the electrodes and arc movement characteristics versus different chamber configuration and external magnetic field are found, and the mechanism of the above phenomena is described in detail. Finally, in order to verify the simulation results, arc movement is investigated by hi-spec motion analyzer experimentally.

Using the Vibration signatures obtained during the operations as the original data, a mechanical condition monitoring method for vacuum circuit breaker is developed in this paper. The method combined the time-frequency analysis and the condition recognition based on artificial neural network. During preprocessing, the vibration signature was decomposed into individual frequency bands using the arithmetic of wavelet packets. The signal energy in the main frequency bands was used to form the condition feature vector, which was input to the artificial neural network for condition recognition. By introducing the parameter of approximation degree, a new recognition arithmetic based on Radial Basis Function was constructed. This approach could not only distinguish these conditions that belong to different known condition modes but also distinguish new condition modes.

In this paper we mainly focus on the effect of a ferromagnetic material on the critical current of Bi-2223 tape. The magnetic field distributions of tapes with several different layouts of a ferromagnetic material are investigated by calculation and the corresponding critical current is tested experimentally. The analysis indicates that the critical current of the tape can be improved effectively by laying the ferromagnetic material perpendicularly next to the tape edge. Furthermore, various other ferromagnetic parameters are also important for reducing the magnetic field induced by the current flowing through the tape.

This paper focuses on the research of a new high-speed DC switch repulsion mechanism with experimental and simulation methods. Multi-physical equations reflecting the transient electromagnetic field, electric circuit, mechanical motion and material deformation are coupled in the calculation. For the reason of accuracy, skin effect and the proximity effect caused by the current in the coil are also taken into account. According to the simulation results, which indicate several key parameters severely affecting the mechanism speed, a high-speed DC switch repulsion mechanism is developed. By the test of mechanism motion, its average speed can be up to 8.4 m/s and its mechanism response time is 250 µs, which verifies the simulation results. Furthermore, during high speed motion the stress on the metal plate and moving contact is also discussed. It is noticed that the influence of the material deformation on the mechanical motion is very important.

This paper focuses on the numerical and experimental investigations of the influence of two polymers (PA6 and POM) on the arc behavior during arc motion process. The mathematical model of 3-dimentional air arc plasma considering the ablation of lateral walls is built based on magnetic hydro-dynamics (MHD). By adopting the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package based on control-volume method, the above MHD model is solved and the distribution of temperature field, concentration field, flow field and electrical potential field in the arc chamber are calculated. The simulation results indicate that the vapor concentration behind the arc column is higher than that in front of the arc column because of the existence of "double vortices" in the arc chamber. The use of polymers causes the maximal arc voltage increase 16.2% with POM and 18.9% with PA6 in this case and causes the average arc velocity increase 15.8% with POM and 21.1% with PA6 in this case. The experiments are also carried out to study the influence of polymers on arc voltage and arc root position in the arc chamber during arc motion. The experimental results prove the validity of the numerical investigation.

The liquid metal current limiter (LMCL) is a possible alternative to limit the short current of power system due to its special merits. This paper is devoted to the investigation of the arc behavior in liquid metal GaInSn for current limiting application. Firstly, the arc evolution including arc initiation, arc expansion and arc extinguish is observed through an experimental device. The resistance of arc and the self healing property of liquid metal are described. Subsequently, the arc erosion on electrodes is presented with its causes analyzed. Finally, the arc characteristics with the influence of rise rate of prospective current and channel diameter are discussed in details.

When ultra-high-frequency (UHF) method is applied in partial discharge (PD) detection for GIS, the propagation process and rules of electromagnetic (EM) wave need to be understood clearly for conducting diagnosis and assessment about the real insulation status. The preceding researches are mainly concerning about the radial component of the UHF signal, but the propagation of the signal components in axial and radial directions and that perpendicular to the radial direction of the GIS tank are rarely considered. So in this paper, for a 252,kV GIS with T-shaped structure (TS), the propagation and attenuation of PD-induced EM wave in different circumferential angles and directions are investigated profoundly in time and frequency domain based on Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method. The attenuation rules of the peak to peak value (Vpp) and cumulative energy are concluded. By comparing the results of straight branch and T branch, the influence of T-shaped structure over the propagation of different signal components are summarized. Moreover, the new circumferential and axial location methods proposed in the previous work are verified to be still applicable. This paper discusses the propagation mechanism of UHF signal in T-shaped tank, which provides some referential significance towards the utilization of UHF technique and better implementation of PD detection.

For the direct measurement of very fast transient current (VFTC) due to switch operation in gas insulated switchgear (GIS), usually it will interfere the original operation or change the structure of switch. In this paper a method for calculation of transient current caused by the disconnect operation in GIS by the inverse operation of the electromagnetic (EM) near field is presented. A GIS is modeled by the finite integration technique (FIT), and all the media between the excitation source and the observation position are considered as a black box whose input is VFTC and output is EM field. A coefficient matrix is established to reflect the connection between the input and output in frequency domain, and the VFTC in frequency domain will be the result of multiplying the inverse matrix by the measurement result minus the EM field caused by transient grounding potential rise (TGPR) or transient enclosure voltage (TEV) in the observation position. Finally the time domain form of VFTC can be obtained by the interpolation and IFFT. Comparison between the result and simulation shows the validation of this method.

It is novel to apply magnetic field in the indoor air purification by collecting pre-charged suspended particles. Based on experiments and analysis of relative data, the effects of some influential factors (the number of discharge electrode, the polarity and magnitude of discharge voltage, the direction and magnitude of magnetic field, the initial velocity of charged particles, the distance between particle collecting plates) on the efficiency of air purification are discussed. The results indicate that the purification efficiency is improved by applying the proper magnetic field, -6 kV direct current voltage is an optimal voltage and there are optimal magnitudes of the distance between collecting plate and the initial velocity of particles in the purification process.

This paper presents a 2-D model for calculating the current density distribution and the flux-flow resistivity of a Melt Cast Process BSCCO 2212 rod during the quenching process in self field with large current density. Based on the forces analysis of the flux-line lattice, the equilibrium equation for the 2-D viscous flux motion is derived from the model. With this equation, the current density distribution and the flux density distribution are obtained in not only the critical state but also the flux-flow state. Subsequently, the average flux-flow resistivity is calculated with the knowledge of the 2-D field distribution. The calculation results are in accordance with the experimental results. Finally, the applications of the 2-D model are extended to the superconducting tube and the low-Tc superconductor.

This paper proposes the P-1 radiation model for the calculation of low voltage arc plasma. The influence of both emission and self-absorption are taken into account in this model. Based on the couple of electric field, magnetic field, flow field and thermal field, a three-dimensional arc chamber model is constructed and its radiation energy is calculated by the P-1 model with the spectrum divided into six bands. From the obtained distributions of temperature, incident radiation intensity, plasma velocity and current density by P-1 model, it is observed that temperature is obviously different from the result by net emission coefficient (NEC) method in the low temperature region. Arc column edges near the arc root also absorb radiation energy. Furthermore, compared with the result by NEC method, the arc column voltage calculated by P-1 model is lower and more close to the experimental result.

There are two interesting phenomena for the electrical contact characteristics of YBCO bulk. One is the transition between low and high contact resistance states at a threshold current value which is called a transfer current; the other is the forming reason of the residual resistance when the carrying current is lower than the transfer current. In this paper, an axial symmetric model is constructed to investigate these two phenomena. During the calculation, the thermal field, the electrical field and the self magnetic field are coupled with each other. The detailed fields' distributions are obtained. The calculation results are accordance with the experimental results. And some useful conclusions are drawn based on the numerical analyses.

A new type of permanent magnet actuator driven by electromagnetic repulsive force in breaking course and electromagnetic attraction force during closing course is presented in this paper, and the static and dynamic characteristics for contactor with this new type actuator are mainly focused on by simulation and experiment simultaneously. Firstly, the static electromagnetic attraction force in closing course and electromagnetic repulsive force in breaking course are studied by FEM simulation and experiment. Secondly, by coupling of the electrical and mechanical differential equations, the dynamic electromagnetic attraction force in closing course and dynamic electromagnetic repulsive force in breaking course are obtained respectively. Thirdly, by constructing the mechanical model of contact system and permanent magnet actuator, the displacements of moving contact and moving core while both contactors' closing and breaking are obtained by simulation and experimental study. It is indicated that simulation results coincide well with that of experiment.

An arc model has been applied in this paper to study the fundamental interruption environment of a 550 kV SF6 single-break tank circuit breaker. The full differential model takes into account of all important physical mechanisms and is implemented into a commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package, PHOENICS. The model takes a magneto-hydro-dynamics (MHD) approach and the governing equations are solved using the Finite Volume Method (FVM). Through the simulation, the flow velocity vector and mach number for capacitive current switching and short-circuit current breaking are analyzed, and flow dynamic characteristics are obtained. The simulation can provide helpful reference for the design of 550 kV SF6 single-break tank circuit breaker.

A new type of algorithm for predicting the mechanical faults of a vacuum circuit breaker (VCB) based on an artificial neural network (ANN) is proposed in this paper. There are two types of mechanical faults in a VCB: operation mechanism faults and tripping circuit faults. An angle displacement sensor is used to measure the main axle angle displacement which reflects the displacement of the moving contact, to obtain the state of the operation mechanism in the VCB, while a Hall current sensor is used to measure the trip coil current, which reflects the operation state of the tripping circuit. Then an ANN prediction algorithm based on a sliding time window is proposed in this paper and successfully used to predict mechanical faults in a VCB. The research results in this paper provide a theoretical basis for the realization of online monitoring and fault diagnosis of a VCB.