Dielectric characteristics of vacuum circuit breakers with CuCr and CuBi contacts before and after short-circuit breaking operations

Abstract

This paper presents the results of the degree of irreversible changes of dielectric properties of vacuum circuit breakers with CuCr and CuBi contacts before and after short-circuit breaking operations. Tests of dielectric properties were performed on four different types of switching vacuum chamber with RMF electrodes in the form of a spiral disk with slots. The paper describes the configuration of measuring system for determining the dielectric properties of circuit breakers with DC, AC and pulse voltage. It also describes the measuring procedure. The results were analyzed and the experimentally obtained random variable breakdown voltage is found to belong to Weibull distribution in all cases. Based on these results it was found that for the vacuum circuit breakers with CuCr contacts and CuBi breakdown occurs by the emission mechanism after stopping of diffuse arc with the initial breakdown at the anode. It was also found that significant reduction of the breakdown voltage occurs only after a short-circuit current breaking for a constricted arc. Only in this case, the significant difference between circuit breakers with CuBi and CuCr contacts is observed. This difference is explained by the fact that breakdown voltage for a constricted arc strongly depends on the shape of the applied voltage by the action mechanism of micro particles generated during the breaking of the arc current for the vacuum circuit breakers with CuBi contacts and it is caused by material of contacts. The results confirm the lower degree of irreversible changes of dielectric properties of vacuum circuit breakers with CuCr contacts in operation.