3-D Magnetostatic Moment Method Dedicated to Arc Interruption Process Modeling

The behavior of arcs in circuit breakers is affected by interactions of several physics. To simulate this, a 3-D modeling system has already been developed. It considers the arc fluid dynamics, the radiation, the plastic vaporization, the current flow within the electrodes and the plasma, and the magnetic field generated by currents. However, to consider the influence of ferromagnetic regions, the current simulation model has to be extended. The magnetic moment method (MoM) is an integral method where only active regions (i.e., ferromagnetic regions in our context) are meshed. Thus, it is particularly well adapted for breaking modeling with a few ferromagnetic regions in comparison with the whole air region. In this paper, circuit breaker principle is explained, the arc interruption modeling is described, a nonlinear MoM model based on a point matching approach is discussed, and finally an arc interruption process modeled with the introduction of ferromagnetic regions is presented.