• 대한기계학회논문집B
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• 제31권10호
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• pp.832-839
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• 2007

The geometry and dimensions of an expansion chamber are decisive factors in thermal puffer plasma chamber designs. Because they together dominate the temperature and speed at which the cooling gas from the chamber flows back through a flow channel to the arcing zone for the successful interruption of fault currents. In this study, we calculated the flow and mass transfer driven by arc plasma, and investigated the effects of a flow guide installed inside a thermal puffer plasma chamber. It is found that the existing cold gas of the chamber mixes with hot gases entrained from the arcing zone and is subjected to compression due to pressure build-up in the chamber. The pressure build-up with the flow guide is larger than that without due to a vortex which rotates clockwise around the chamber center. By the reverse pressure gradient, the mixing gas of the chamber flows back out for cooling down the residual plasma near current zero. In the case with the flow guide, the temperature just before current zero is lower than that without, and the Cu concentration with high electrical conductivity is also less than that without the flow guide.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 2006년도 제37회 하계학술대회 논문집 B
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• pp.677-678
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• 2006

Pressure risc is an important design factor and affects significantly on the characteristics of gas circuit breakers. For self-blast circuit breakers, the nozzle ablation plays important role in pressure-building up and should be properly considered for the accurate calculation. In this paper, the nozzle ablation is treated as a boundary condition and the pressure is calculated from mass fractions of PTFE and SF6. The amount of the ablated mass of a nozzle is assumed to be proportional to the are energy and the area of nozzle surface that directly touches arc. The calculation result is compared with measured data and shows good agreement with it.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 2006년도 제37회 하계학술대회 논문집 C
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• pp.1422-1423
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• 2006

In our study, the PTFE nozzle ablation in the high-voltage self-blast type $SF_6$ gas circuit breaker was investigated. The test circuit breaker has the structure that the pin electrode is moving and the pressure reservoir volume and the dimension is almost same as commercial 145kv 40kA circuit breaker for similar result in real circuit breaker. The variation of current and arcing time was the range of $36kA_{rms}$(symmetry) - $40kA_{rms}$(asymmetry) and 10-16 ms. From the measured data the tendecy of the mass loss of the nozzle to current load and arc energy was estimated. In this process, the distance from the arc to nozzle(PTFE) surface, area which was exposed to arc and stroke contour was considered. These results will be used to enhance the accuracy of the computational fluid dynamics analysis in circuit breaker and estimate the residual life time of a circuit breaker.