Internal Arc-Connected Phenomena Simulations Based on Cellular Automata Method

In this paper, a novel approach for simulating phenomena accompanying internal arc ignition is proposed. This method is based on the cellular automata (CA) algorithm, where physical equations correspond to cell states and transition rules. In the proposed model, the cell states consist of pressure, temperature, gas velocity, and so on. Each cell has its own neighborhood defined. The present state of each cell depends on its former value, the actual values from neighboring cells, and on transition rules. At each time step, the cell states are updated. Thanks to the proposed methodology, it is possible to simulate internal arc-connected phenomena for very sophisticated shapes of electrical equipment simply by dividing the shape into discrete cells. The proposed approach can be used as an alternative for commonly used methodologies: for simplified approaches (where simplified equations are used for field calculations in averaged volumes) as well as for computational fluid dynamic method (where advanced mathematical and physical apparatus is employed). In this paper, the results show the comparison between the proposed methodology and both of these solutions. The proposed approach can be applied in, e.g., gas-insulated switchgear and transformer applications.