Experimental and Numerical Study on Polymer Ablated Arc Characteristics with One Side Flow Outlet Model

Abstract

An experimental and numerical study was conducted on the polymer ablated arc with an electrode configuration of a one-side gas flow outlet model. The polymers used for molded case circuit breaker and gas circuit breaker, such as PA6, POM, and PTFE, were compared. In the experiment, the polymer ablated arc characteristics of arc voltage, arc energy, and mass loss of polymer by ablation were measured. In the numerical calculation, an electromagnetic thermofluid simulation for polymer ablated arc was conducted using a calculation model of similar structure but without using empirical values. In the model used, the polymer ablation was treated as the pyrolytic ablation rather the photodegraded ablation because the arc plasma was definitely in contact with the polymer. The comparison of both experiment and numerical simulation results revealed the relationship between arc energy and mass loss of polymer by ablation, and these values agreed well. Therefore, the numerical simulation model with pyrolytic ablation developed was indicated to be valid for predicting the polymer ablated arc with plasma-polymer contact.