Fundamental arc properties for the design of gas-blast circuit-breaker test heads

Although the design of gas-blast-circuit-breaker test heads involves a compromise between a number of constraints that are imposed by widely different considerations, the inherent performance capability of such test heads should, in principle, be predictable from a knowledge of the dominant arc-plasma processes. Sufficient, although still incomplete, knowledge of these arc processes now exists for the feasibility to be examined of establishing a test-head design process, based on fundamental plasma properties