Short gap arc V-I characteristics are essential to discussions on behavior of contact arc at opening and closing. From this point of view, some conventional arc V-I characteristics were reviewed and inconvenient points of them for practical use were pointed out: (1) not a few electrode-material-dependent constants needed in the equation of V-I relation, (2) difficulty in the prediction of real arc extinction phenomena. In order to overcome these inconveniences, the author measured short gap arc V-I characteristics originally, and tried to formulate them into a simple form on the assumption that the arc column V-I characteristics are little dependent on electrode materials but the unstable arc region is strongly dependent on electrode materials. Measured arc column voltage was directly proportional to the square root of gap length and inversely proportional to the cube root of arc current. Arc became unstable when arc current decreased near to the value generally known as the minimum arc current. It was not necessarily the case that the arc extinguished completely at the minimum arc current, but, depending on the circuit conditions, the arc often existed discontinuously below the so-called minimum arc current. Simple empirical V-I characteristics were proposed for practical use, together with the unstable arc region as the information for arc extinction phenomena.

An experimental equation of V-I characteristics of breaking arc was investigated in the air at atmospheric pressure. Material of the contact pair is Ag, Au, Cu and Ni. Supply voltage is set to 42, 48 and 54 V. The electrical resistance of experimental circuit is 5 Ω. The time evolutions of arc voltage, arc current and gap length were measured, simultaneously. V-I characteristics were obtained from those measured values. The dependence of the arc voltage on the gap length was represented by an approximate formula as a straight line in order to obtain the experimental equation. And the dependence of the strength of electric field of arc column on the supply voltage was approximated to a straight line. Using these approximate formulae, the experimental equation of the dependence of the arc voltage on the arc current was obtained with the gap length as a parameter. It was shown that the experimental equation agreed with experimental data in the experimental conditions for each contact material.