Prediction of Insulation Capability for Ground Fault to Consider Asymmetry in SF6 Circuit Breaker

Abstract

Currently, most high-voltage gas circuit breakers (CBs) include asymmetrical geometries in the shield, the tank, the hot-gas exhaust, and the connection parts for bushings. For this reason, a 3-dimensional (3-D) analysis of the insulation capability is necessary, rather than a 2-D analysis. However, a 3-D analysis has difficulties due to the computational time and complex modeling. This paper presents a 3-D analysis considering the asymmetry in high-voltage gas CBs and a technique to reduce the calculation time. In the proposed technique, the arc plasma requiring the most computational time is first calculated by a 2-D analysis. Then, the results such as pressure, temperature, and velocity are input as a source for the 3-D analysis. This technique is applied to a 145kV self-blast-type CB and the analysis result exhibits good agreement with the experimental result.