Transient heating of gas insulated switchgears

This paper investigates the thermal effects of short fault currents in switchgears. During short circuits, the current and temperature distribution over the cross section and even along the perimeter of the busbars and the enclosures can become non-uniform, exposing the separate contact elements of the contact systems to different temperatures. This effect will be demonstrated with an example of a medium voltage unit. All the results were obtained from coupled field finite element simulations. With the coupling of the electromagnetic and the thermal models, the temperature dependence of the material properties was also taken into account.