Study on the Radial Dissipation of Residual Plasma in Vacuum Circuit Breaker with a Two-Dimensional Particle-In-Cell Model

Abstract

Vacuum circuit breakers (VCB) have been widely applied in medium voltage field. Because of the excellent high-frequency switching characteristics, VCB can also be used in DC switching field. During a current interruption process in a vacuum circuit breaker, the residual plasma has great effects on its breaking performance. At present, post-arc residual plasma dissipation is mainly studied with the one-dimensional (1D) models including continuous transition model, the hybrid Maxwell-Boltzmann model and the particle-in-cell (PIC) model. Due to the limitation of 1D model, the residual plasma radial motion is seldom discussed. In this paper, to study the dissipation of the residual plasma, a two-dimensional (2D) particle-in-cell (PIC) model is developed. The influences of contact radius, contact gap, shield position and polarity on the dissipation of residual plasma are investigated. The simulation results show that the factors above have certain influences on the residual plasma motions, and the contact gap and shielding position have a small effect on the radial motion of the particles. To verify the feasibility of the simulation, a comparison between experiment and simulation is carried out. These simulations also benefit the understanding of the microscopic physical mechanism of residual plasma dissipation.