Characteristics Analysis and Simulation of Permanent Magnet Actuator With a New Control Method for Air Circuit Breaker

In this paper, a new method is proposed to control the permanent magnet actuator (PMA) of air circuit breaker (ACB). The characteristics such as magnetic field, making and breaking processes are analyzed using finite-element method. The inductance and permanent magnetic parameters are computed in advance for subsequent incorporation into a cosimulation system. The simulation model is setup in Matlab and data are shared with the automatic dynamic analysis of mechanical systems (ADAMS) software. The making and breaking processes are integrated into a simulation system to allow simple observation of the simulation procedure. Experiments are carried out on an ACB prototype to verify the proposed control method.