The influence of weak transverse magnetic field on plasma dissipation process in the post-arc phase in a vacuum interrupter

Abstract

Transverse magnetic field (TMF) contacts and applying external TMF are often adopted for reducing the ablation of the contact surface, but TMF will also affect the breaking performance of the vacuum interrupters. In this work, we investigated the influence of weak TMF on the expansion of the plasma in the post-arc phase with one-dimensional implicit particle-in-cell/Monte Carlo collision model, and we added an external circuit to the model to ensure the correctness of the calculation results. We simulated multiple magnetic field strengths (<30 mT), compared the plasma expansion process with the TMF strengths of 0 mT and 10 mT, and discussed the influence of metal vapor density on the insulation performance recovery of the vacuum interrupter. From the results, applying TMF with strength below 5 mT has little effect on the expansion of the plasma, and the TMF can increase the plasma density which improve the flow capacity of vacuum circuit breakers when the magnetic field above 10 mT, which is because the particles become more difficult to leave the discharge area under the force of the magnetic field. In general, we find that weak external TMF may adversely affect the breaking performance of the vacuum circuit breakers.