Abstract
To analyze the small current interruption performance for the gas circuit breakers, the gas density and electric field intensity should be calculated. In this paper, the FVFLIC method is used for the gas flow analysis and the FEM for the electric field analysis. Then, the dielectric withstanding voltage is evaluated by the empirical formulation or Streamer theory. By comparing the calculated dielectric strength with the test result, it is found that both methods show good prediction capability for the small current interruption performance. Especially, when both methods predict the same interrupting performance, the prediction is in accordance with the experimental result.