New Type of Electrical Contacts for High Voltage Switchgear Applications

This study describes the development of new electrical contacts technology for high voltage (HV) applications, especially circuit breakers. A new type of arcing contact material, based on carbon/copper composite (C-Cu), has been compared with a more common one, based on tungsten/copper W-Cu material. It can be seen that carbon/copper composite materials is able to behave reasonably well. In particular, their erosion during switching tests was not excessive compared to those of W-Cu contacts. In addition, it is shown that, in some applications, the erosion of the circuit breaker nozzle due to arcing was lower than the one obtained with copper/tungsten composites. In parallel, the plasma composition calculations showed that, depending on conditions, graphite formation within the arcing chamber can be avoided. Such carbon/copper composite contacts present a promising technology