The paper is devoted to the experimental study of the arc plasma characteristics in SF6, N2 and CO2. To one flexible model of gas circuit breaker, short circuit experiments have been carried out considering the influence of contact gap (4–12 mm), gas pressure (1–5 atm), short circuit current (1–5 kA effective value) as well as gas species particularly. During the experiments, the arc image, arc current and arc voltage are recorded by the high speed camera, shunt and voltage transducer, respectively. It demonstrates that to the above mentioned three kinds of gases, the arc radius and arc voltage increase with the short circuit current and gas pressure normally; however, under the same experimental conditions, N2 arc holds the minimum arc radius and the maximum arc voltage, and the arc voltage of SF6 arc is the lowest.