Fluid-chemical modeling of the near-cathode sheath formation process in a high current broken in DC air circuit breaker

doi:10.1088/1674-1056/acd7cb

Abstract When the contacts of a medium-voltage DC air circuit breaker (DCCB) are separated, the energy distribution of the arc is determined by the formation process of the near-electrode sheath. Therefore, the voltage drop through the near-electrode sheath is an important means to build up the arc voltage, which directly determines the current-limiting performance of the DCCB. A numerical model to describe the near-electrode sheath formation process can provide insight into the physical mechanism of the arc formation, and thus provide a method for arc energy regulation. In this work, we establish a two-dimensional axisymmetric time-varying model of a medium-voltage DCCB arc when interrupted by high current based on a fluid-chemical model involving 16 kinds of species and 46 collision reactions. The transient distributions of electron number density, positive and negative ion number density, net space charge density, axial electric field, axial potential between electrodes, and near-cathode sheath are obtained from the numerical model. The computational results show that the electron density in the arc column increases, then decreases, and then stabilizes during the near-cathode sheath formation process, and the arc column's diameter gradually becomes wider. The 11.14 V—12.33 V drops along the 17 μm space charge layer away from the cathode (65.5 kV/m—72.5 kV/m) when the current varies from 20 kA—80 kA. The homogeneous external magnetic field has little effect on the distribution of particles in the near-cathode sheath core, but the electron number density at the near-cathode sheath periphery can increase as the magnetic field increases and the homogeneous external magnetic field will lead to arc diffusion. The validity of the numerical model can be proven by comparison with the experiment.

Keywords: near-cathode sheath atmospheric pressure air arc fluid-chemical model high current DC air circuit breaker (DCCB)

Received: 12 February 2023
Revised: 10 May 2023
Accepted manuscript online: 23 May 2023

PACS:	52.80.Mg	(Arcs; sparks; lightning; atmospheric electricity)
	52.40.Hf	(Plasma-material interactions; boundary layer effects)
	52.65.Kj	(Magnetohydrodynamic and fluid equation)

Fund: Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51977132), Key Special Science and Technology Project of Liaoning Province (Grant No. 2020JH1/10100012), and General Program of the Education Department of Liaoning Province (Grant No. LJKZ0126).

Corresponding Authors: Jing Li
E-mail: lijing@sut.edu.cn

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Shi-Dong Peng(彭世东), Jing Li(李静), Wei Duan(段薇), Yun-Dong Cao(曹云东), Shu-Xin Liu(刘树鑫), and Hao Huang(黄浩) Fluid-chemical modeling of the near-cathode sheath formation process in a high current broken in DC air circuit breaker 2024 Chin. Phys. B 33 015204

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Fluid-chemical modeling of the near-cathode sheath formation process in a high current broken in DC air circuit breaker

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