Mechanism of initiative arc-extinguishing lightning protection gap of suppressing arc-establishing type based on lightning impulse triggering

This article describes an initiative arc-extinguishing lightning protection gap(IALPG) of suppressing arc-establishing(AES) type, which has significant advantages to various traditional arc-induced ablation tubes. The capsules stored in IALPG could be triggered within 10us by lightning impulse to produce AEX airflow when parallel gap being breakdown and the airflow could increase independently, realizing the AEX and AES process started almost synchronously so that the airflow could act on the initial AES stage of transient power frequency arc. A numerical model was built and relevant calculation and experiment were preformed. The results showed that the amplitude of arc current could just reach about 10.6A and the arc could be extinguished in about 0.4ms, which was far less than the initial operation time of relay protection, thus proving IALPG´s better efficiency.