Electric field optimization of floating electrode configuration in vacuum interrupter

For environment-friendly vacuum interrupter (VI), higher voltage operation and more compactness are required. From this point of view, and to enhance the electrical insulation performance of VI, it is needed to introduce the field optimization techniques. In this paper, we propose a new optimization technique for electrode configuration with floating potential in VI. We applied this optimization technique to the edge configuration of center shield in VI with considering the arrangement of grounded tank. Consequently, the maximum electric field strength decreased to 70% of non-optimized shape. From the results, we verified the effectiveness of the proposed automatic numerical optimization technique for the improvement of the insulation performance in high voltage vacuum insulated equipment.