Abstract
The challenges of an HVDC breaker are to generate impulsive forces in the order of hundreds of kilonewtons within fractions of a millisecond, to withstand the arising internal mechanical stresses and to transmit these forces via an electrically-insulating device to the contact system with minimum time delay. In this work, several models were developed with different levels of complexity, computation time and accuracy. Experiments were done with two mushroom-shaped armatures to validate the developed simulation models. It was concluded that although the electromagnetic force generation mechanism is highly sensitive to the mechanical response of the system, the developed first order hybrid model is able to predict the performance of the breaker with good accuracy.
Highlights
The increasing need for integrating renewable energy sources, such as off-shore wind power and power harnessed from photovoltaic cells installed in deserts, has rekindled interest in high voltage direct current (HVDC) multi-terminal grids [1]
The modeling of the actuator is divided into two parts, a circuit model and a finite element method (FEM) model, that are implemented in the software COMSOL Multiphysics
To model the behavior of the breaker when subjected to such impulsive forces, both actuators, comprising the coil, the armature and the pull rod attached to the metal contacts, are meshed and simulated
Summary
The increasing need for integrating renewable energy sources, such as off-shore wind power and power harnessed from photovoltaic cells installed in deserts, has rekindled interest in high voltage direct current (HVDC) multi-terminal grids [1]. Its feasibility relies entirely on the existence of an HVDC breaker that is able to interrupt fault currents within very short time intervals [3]. To be able to interrupt fault currents promptly, an ultra-fast electromagnetic drive is needed to actuate the current carrying contacts by generating impulsive forces within hundreds of microseconds. The arc might reignite, especially if the air gap separating both contacts is not sufficiently large. The modeling of such a breaker is challenging, since it should be simulated with all of the necessary involved physics. Novel multi-physics hybrid and finite element method-based models are presented and compared
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