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Experimental and Numerical Studies of Arc Restrikes in Low-Voltage Circuit Breakers

Christian Fi evet, Michel Barrault, Pierre Ch evrier, and Pascale Petit
AbstractThis paper is devoted to the study of the arc restrike phenomenon in low-voltage circuit breakers. We focused our interest on the type of arc restrike that can be described as a sudden reignition in the arcing contact region while the arc was situated in the quenching chamber a few tens of microseconds before it occurs. Our experimental investigations have established that the critical arcing contact region is still crossed by a socalled residual current on the order of several amperes. A gas temperature around 4200 K was derived from electrical measurements in this region before the arc restrike occurrence. We also demonstrate that the restrike takes place through the growth of the remaining current of several amperes in the arcing contact region. A numerical approach was carried out with a two-dimensional hydrodynamic code in order to simulate the gas behavior in the arcing contact region before and during the arc restrike phenomenon. The same temperature as the measured one is calculated just before the restrike. It is demonstrated that the current density appears to be the most sensible quantity. A critical value of 5 A/cm2 was calculated. Index Terms Gas temperature measurement, hydrodynamic modeling.

Fig. 1. Side view of the model circuit breaker. (a) Moving contact (Cu), (b) arcing contacts in closed position, (c) copper electrodes, (d) pressure sensor, (e) sidewalls (PMMA or glass, 14 mm spacing), (f) splitting plates, (g) gas exhaust, (h) high-sensitivity current measurement device, and (i) current derivation branch. A: arc ignition area, B: prechamber, C: arc-quenching chamber.

I. INTRODUCTION N most miniature circuit breakers, the interruption operation of a several kiloampere short circuit is performed by the displacement of an electrical arc from an ignition region (arcing contact region) to a quenching area. The quenching area consists of parallel steel plates, and is generally called the arc chamber, arc stack, or arc-splitting plates. Note that both arc squeezing or splitting in the quenching area lead to the same effect of rapid arc voltage rise. The breaking technique is based on current limitation, which means that the effective peak value of the arc current is far below the prospective current value. So this technique minimizes the energy dissipated in the circuit breaker and in the protected circuit. Nevertheless, it requires an extremely rapid rise of the arc voltage obtained by the squeezing and splitting of the arc in the arc stack. During this phase, a new arc may reappear under certain conditions at the back in the ignition area, and the arc in the chamber then extinguishes. This event lasts a few microseconds. This phenomenon is called arc restrike, arc back commutation, or arc reignition, and results in more energy spent in the

device. It is accompanied by a pressure increase and damage to the arcing contacts. The thermodynamic state of the medium between the contacts before the occurrence of the restrike is studied in this paper with both experimental and numerical approaches. A future paper will deal more specically with the arc restrike mechanism with both optical diagnostic and modeling. In the experimental section, electrical conductivities and gas temperatures are derived from electrical measurements. In the modeling section, the restrike conditions are more extensively investigated with a proprietary two-dimensional hydrodynamic code. II. EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF THE MEDIUM AT THE ARC RESTRIKE LOCATION A. Experimental Setup, Diagnostic Means, and Example of Breaking Operation 1) Experimental Setup: For practical reasons regarding the implementation of the diagnostic means, a model circuit breaker has been chosen. Nevertheless, it retains the main characteristics of an industrial unit (Fig. 1): arc ignition performed by a moving contact, identical arc-quenching chamber, and arc displacement from an ignition area to a quenching area. The breaking operation occurs in a nearly close volume, and two calibrated gas exhausts (25 mm ) set at each end of the breaker ensure a realistic gas ow inside the device. Copper and polymethymethacrylate (PMMA) are, respectively, the electrode and sidewall materials.

Manuscript received December 15, 1996; revised February 26, 1997. The authors are with the Switchgear Group, Research Department/A2, Schneider Electric SA, F-38050 Grenoble Cedex 9, France. Publisher Item Identier S 0093-3813(97)07234-2.

00933813/97$10.00 1997 IEEE

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A capacitor bank is the power source, which delivered a 5 kA peak value 50 Hz sine-shaped current. 2) Diagnostic Means: Global and local electrical quantities have been measured throughout the breaking operation: arc voltage with a resistive voltage divider; total current with a Rogowski coil; pressure with a piezoelectric transducer; very small currents in the arcing contact region with a high-sensitivity current measurement device. This device has been designed in our research center. Its remarkable performance lies in its accuracy for measuring very small currents (down to several tens of milliamperes) just after the passage of a current, which may amount to up to tens of kiloamperes, with automatic insertion of the measuring shunt [1]. It consists of power diodes, Schottky diodes, and adjustable resistors, all in parallel. It may be stressed that this measurement is performed in the region included between the left-hand bottom of the model breaker and the tip of the movable contact (arc ignition region). 3) Example of Breaking Operation: An example of signals recorded during the breaking from the various diagnostics is shown in Fig. 2. The current interruption can be split up into three major phases (visible on the arc voltage waveform). Phase 1, current transfer phase: After the arc ignition, the Lorentz forces thrust the arc from the arcing contacts to the prechamber. Phase 2, arc displacement: The arc moves through the so-called prechamber into the quenching area; an attempt to enter the arc-splitting plates is witnessed by a rapid increase of the arc voltage, due to a squeezing phenomenon. Phase 3, arc-quenching: When the arc enters the arc stack, the squeezing by the slot cut out in the splitting plates induces a sharp increase of the arc voltage. In a second stage, the arc further penetrates the arc stack and splits up into multiple arcs. It then results in a relatively stable value of the arc voltage around 380 V. A sharp drop of the arc voltage is an indication of an arc restrike, which is a current transfer backward from the arc stack to the arc ignition region. The small current measurement device, which only operates in the arc ignition area, demonstrates the location of the restrike in this area (see Fig. 2). The different arc positions have been located by using an ultrafast imaging diagnostic.

Fig. 2. Oscillogram traces and main phases during a typical breaking operation.

B. Diagnostic of the Weak Electrical Conduction and Gas Temperature Measurement 1) Electrical Measurements: Some investigations have been previously made for assessing the local conductance of the gas outside the arc with electrical probes [2], [3]. The special arrangement shown in Fig. 1 (current derivation branch effective after the arc transfer from the ignition region to the quenching region) and the high-sensitivity current measurement device described above enable us to probe the residual current in the whole arcing contact region after the arc has left it.

The signal of the shunt device is given by the oscillogram in Fig. 2. The saturation of the signal (15 A) is due to the recording scale, intentionally chosen at a low level to stress the presence of a current in the range of a few amperes. The real physical saturation of the signal occurs around 60 A, due to the clipping effect of the Schottky diodes. Once the arc has left the arcing contacts, a small current of up to 10 A peak value can be measured in the arc ignition region. This current reveals the presence of a conductive medium remaining behind the arc. We may note the abrupt rise of this so-called residual current when the arc enters the quenching chamber as a consequence of the sharp increase of the arc voltage. Hence, the ignition region medium receives, in a few microseconds, a signicantly higher power input (Joule heating). The origin of this residual conduction was previously investigated specically in a more convenient arrangement without arc-splitting plates [4]. It was demonstrated that in this kind of device, the residual current comes from the presence of organic vapors originating from the arc-plastic sidewall interaction after the arc current transfer phase. At that time, the arc is wide enough to interact strongly with the sidewalls. Then the vaporized material ows backward toward the ignition area. In case of an arrangement with inert sidewalls, no signicant residual current was measured. Both the change of thermodynamic properties (presence of organic gas) and the additional hot gas may be involved in the residual current phenomenon. It is shown in the numerical modeling (Section III-B) that the second assumption appears to be the major effect. The observation of a conduction that does not break down systematically in a few s implies that the phenomenon occurs in volume, unlike the case of a lamentlike conductive medium [5]. 2) Estimation of the Electrical Conductivity in the Arcing Contact Area: Thanks to the measurement of the residual current, an estimation of the electrical conductivity before and after an arc restrike event is realizable.

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In order to do so, the following assumptions were made: the cross section of the conductive medium is the moving contact surface area, and the conductivity is spatially homogeneous. Thus, the electrical conductivity in the arc ignition region can be written in the form

is the residual current, is the distance between the movable contact and the top electrode, is the arc voltage, and is the moving contact surface area. The inaccuracy of 25% in the moving contact position is not taken into account. It does not prevent determining the temperature with fair accuracy (due to the important nonlinearity between and ; see Fig. 3). The surface area of the moving contact can be considered as the maximum value of the conductive medium cross section, and as a result, the minimum value of is given by the calculation at each time. The values of and are 1 and 0.85 cm , respectively. The values of several mho/m before an arc calculations yield restrike. The arrival and departure of the arc in the probed region are characterized by the abrupt rise and drop of . 3) Gas Temperature Derived from Electrical Measurements: The mean electrical conductivity derived from the measurement of the weak residual current in the ignition region and the knowledge of the theoretical electrical conductivities at low temperature (less than 5000 K; Fig. 3 [6]) enable us to assess an experimental gas temperature prole as a function of time. No electrical conductivities are presently available at low temperature in vapors composed of organic materials; consequently, air properties were used. It is demonstrated in the numerical modeling section that this point is not critical. A typical time evolution of the gas temperature in the arc ignition region before, during, and after a restrike is presented in Fig. 4. For this estimation, it was supposed that the entire moving contact surface area is the conductive medium cross section, and that the temperature in the medium is homogeneous. It may be stressed that the time evolution of the temperature after the restrike is very reproducible over the numerous different shots performed. The shot-to-shot scattering is less than 200 K. The temperature curve in Fig. 4 shows a uctuating temperature around 4000 K. The arc penetration in the quenching chamber results in a signicant increase of the arc voltage. The consequence is a rise of the input power in the arc ignition region medium, and a sharp rise of is systematically observed. From this stage, two situations are likely to happen: either continues to increase and the current transfer takes place or decreases. The rise and fall of involve the presence of a spatially inhomogeneous medium in temperature; otherwise, as demonstrated by the numerical simulation (Section III-B), the temperature should rise or decrease monotonously from the beginning (arc entering the chamber instant); note that these inhomogeneous temperature conditions occur necessarily near the electrodes, where the maximum temperature of the material is included in the range 10002840 K (copper melting and evaporation temperature).

Fig. 3. Electrical conductivity at low temperature.

When the arc nally remains inside the chamber (from time 0.00575 s), one can observe that the temperature continues to drop during 500 s. This is the time for the recombination toward a nonconductive medium to be achieved. The temperature of the medium, the intensity of the organic vapor ow, and the volume of the weakly conductive medium may already be advanced as the causes for arc restrike. This will be discussed in depth in the modeling section (Section III-B).

III. HYDRODYNAMIC NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF THE ARC RESTRIKE PHENOMENON A. General Presentation of the Two-Dimensional (2-D) Hydrodynamic Numerical Model A 2-D hydrodynamic unstationnary code has been developed for several years at the Schneider Research Center. A detailed presentation of the code is available in [7] and [8]. The model has been built on the 2-D compressible NavierStokes equations with the assumption of local thermodynamical equilibrium. The modeling is performed in two dimensions, essentially because the computation time would be too high in three dimensions. The model consists of resolving the equations of conservation of mass, momentum (two equations), and energy. The main assumptions of the model are as follows. The electrical arc is dened as the area where the temperature is sufciently high to conduct the current. To account for dissociation and ionization of the gas when the temperature increases (from 300 to 30 000 K), we have used the values of transport coefcients and state variables tabulated for [9]. To determine the current density in the electrical arc, we solve the Maxwell equations under the assumption of quasisteady state. To take into account the residual current in low-conducting areas, the electrical conductivities at low temperature (between 3000 and 5000 K) have been computed [6].

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Fig. 4. Time evolution of the gas temperature in the arc ignition area before and after the nal arc restrike. The values are inferred from the measurement of the residual current.

The radiation model is built on the assumption of an optically thin plasma. From previous measurements [10], 15% of the injected power (arc voltage times arc current intensity) is assumed to escape the interaction area. On each cell of the mesh, the emission R is computed using the net emission coefcients calculated by Rahmani [11]. Our model is 2-D, but the physical phenomena observed are three-dimensional (3-D). Because we are interested in properly taking into account the interaction between the wall and the arc, a plane perpendicular to the electrode plane, called the sidewall plane, has been chosen in our study (Fig. 5). However, as this plane does not contain the electrodes, the energy exchanges between the plasma and the electrodes have to be taken into account. Indeed, approximately 50% of the arc energy is absorbed by the electrodes [10], [12]. The losses are of the form

Fig. 5. Schematic drawings of the two possible planes for a 2-D simulation. The sidewall plane was chosen.

where is the thermal conductivity, ( is the local temperature in the nite volume considered, is the maximum temperature at the electrode), is the distance between the electrodes, and is the thickness of the thermal gradient. The thickness is written

processes, and with the determination of the critical quantities in the arc ignition region between the movable contact and the top electrode when the arc has just penetrated the quenching chamber. The measurements have shown that, at this moment, the gas is still conductive, and the arc voltage adds up to 450 V. From this time, the breakdown of the medium into a restrike depends on whether or not the energy removal processes outrun the input power. The issue is investigated in this paragraph with the numerical code above presented. For this local simulation, only the ignition area is considered. The physical quantities are connected through the relation

is the local current density (given by the model) and the coefcients and were assessed through a statistical process (called design of experiments, DEO) comparing computations and experimental results over the physical quantities arc voltage and pressure. B. Local Simulation of the Arc Restrike Previous numerical works [13] have established that the thermal reignition is the most likely process to explain the arc restrike mechanism. Our numerical approach deals with the comprehension of the role of the different energy removal

described in Section I-B3. The input energy is the Joule heating, and the different modes at stake to evacuate the energy are the thermal conduction between the still conductive gas and the surrounding gas (assumed to be at room temperature) and the thermal conduction between the gas and the electrodes. It was found that the radiation processes were negligible at temperatures under 5000 K. The arc voltage and the electrode gap remain constant throughout the computation time, and are, respectively, 450 V and 1 cm.

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Fig. 6. Numerical simulation of the current as a function of time in a Joule heated gas section outside the arc. The initial temperature and section are, respectively, 4000 K and 160 mm2 . The rise of the current reveals the breakdown of the medium leading to an arc restrike. The spatial distributions of the temperature at the three times reported are presented in Fig. 7.

Fig. 7.

Numerical simulation of the temperature in the arcing contact region in the so-called sidewall plane (see Fig. 5). Same conditions as in Fig. 6.

1) Inuence of the Thermal Conduction in the Gas: For this calculation, the initial gas temperature is 4000 K. As a consequence of the above formula, the initial current density is also imposed. The computation shows that the gas evolves toward breakdown for ignition surface areas greater than 6 mm . This means that the higher the ignition surface area , the more negligible the thermal conduction in the gas. In our experimental conditions, 85 mm , thus, the thermal conduction in the gas should be neglected. 2) Inuence of the Gas Temperature and Current Density: In the following computed cases, the initial current crossing the conductive gas is 10 A. This value is close to the experimental critical value for a restrike (see, e.g., the curve in Fig. 2). Different gas temperatures and section conditions have been tested in order to estimate which one leads to restrike, balance, or quenching. The results are presented in Table I. It may be pointed out that the temperature for a restrike condition is very close to the experimental one (around 4200 K, see values in Fig. 4). It appears to prove that the theoretical electrical conductivities used are realistic, and that the effect of additional gas (we have only computed air properties) is

TABLE I RESULTS OF NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF A JOULE-HEATED GAS SECTION FOR DIFFERENT INITIAL CONDITIONS; 450 V ARE APPLIED TO THE 1 cm LONG MEDIUM

dominant over the change of thermodynamic properties due to the presence of organic vapors. The current as a function of time is given in Fig. 6. Fig. 7 provides some examples of the spatial distribution of the temperature in the simulated arc ignition region for several chosen times. The computation demonstrates the major role of the current density. The critical value of is 5 A/cm . Beyond this value, the medium breaks down and restrikes. As previously underlined in the experimental section (Section II-B), the numerical simulations show that the medium always evolves

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TABLE II RESULTS OF NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF A JOULE-HEATED GAS SECTION IN CASE OF AN ADDITIONAL FORCED MASS FLOW

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors are grateful to A. Cloitre for his efcient technical support during the experimental work. REFERENCES
[1] M. Barrault, G. Bernard, J. Maftoul, and S. Rowe, Post arc current measurement down to ten milliamperes range, IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, vol. 8, pp. 17821788, Oct. 1993. [2] Y. Yokomizu, T. Matsumura, K. Shimizu, Y. Kito, S. Takayama, and Y. Aoyama, Conductance diagnostics in hot gas ejected from a molded case circuit breaker during high current arc interruption, in Proc. IEEE 6th Annu. Conf. Power Energy Soc., Nagoya, Japan, Aug. 1995, pp. 275280. [3] P. M. Weaver and J. W. Mcbride, Conductance measurements in the investigation of short circuit arcs in miniature circuit breakers, in Proc. 15th Holm Conf., 1995, pp. 186193. [4] C. Fi evet, P. Petit, M. Y. Perrin, P. Ch evrier, and G. Bernard, Residual conduction in low voltage circuit breaker, in Proc. 11th Int. Conf. Gas Discharges Appl., Tokyo, 1995, pp. 2629. [5] J. Maftoul, M. Barrault, G. Bernard, P. Ch evrier, and S. Rowe, Study of the post recovery current in SF6 circuit breaker, J. Phys. D, Appl. Phys., vol. 28, pp. 11331140, 1995. [6] Y. Yokomizu, Transport properties of high temperature air contaminated with metallic vapor (in Japanese), in IEE Tech. Meet. Switchgear and Protecting Devices, Japan, June 1987, pp. 6171. [7] E. Domejean, P. Ch evrier, C. Fi evet, and P. Petit, Arc-wall interaction modeling in low voltage circuit breaker, J. Phys. D, Appl. Phys., vol. 30, pp. 21322142, Feb. 1997. [8] P. Ch evrier, M. Barrault, and C. Fi evet, Hydrodynamic model for electrical arc modeling, IEEE Trans. Power Delivery, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 18241829, Oct. 1996. [9] A. Gleizes, M. Razanimanana, and S. Vacqui e, Equilibrium composition, thermodynamic properties and transport coefcients of SF6 -N2 mixtures, CNRS, EDF arc Electrique, Report 40277-85-1. [10] C. Fi evet and J. Maftoul, Radiative power losses from moving laminated arcs, in Proc. 11th Int. Conf. Gas Dicharges Appl., Swansea, U.K., 1992, vol. 1, pp. 4649. [11] B. Rahmani, Calcul de l emission nette du rayonnement des arcs dans le SF6 et dans les m elanges SF6 -azote, thesis, Universit e P. Sabatier de Toulouse, France, 1989. [12] C. Fi evet and J. Maftoul, Overall radiative energy balance in motionless wall conned arcs, in Proc. Int. Conf. Switching Arc Phenomena (SAP), Lodz, Poland, Sept. 1993, pp. 316320. [13] M. Lindmayer and H. Stammberger, Application of numerical eld simulation for low voltage switchgear, in Proc. 14th Holm Conf., 1994, pp. 6577.

from the beginning toward its nal state, either breakdown or cooling, when the temperature and density conditions are homogeneous between the electrodes. 3) Inuence of a Forced Gas Flow: For this calculation, the gas in the area where the electrical energy is injected and the surrounding gas have the same temperature. The surrounding gas moves across the simulated Joule-heated section with an imposed velocity in the so-called sidewall plane. The various computation cases and results are summarized in Table II. As a consequence of the same temperature for both heated and surrounding media, the thermal conduction in the gas is ineffective. For a larger Joule-heated gas section, a greater velocity value is required to avoid the thermal breakdown. Some experiments carried out with an ultrafast imaging technique [4] demonstrated that the gas velocity was under 100 m/s. Thus, the gas velocity should not be a sensitive quantity to explain whether or not the slightly conductive medium will restrike. Furthermore, it should be noted that a powerful 2-D hydrodynamic code is necessary even for this kind of local simulation of the gas behavior. Namely, an analytic calculation equating the energy losses, through the gas ow and exchanges with the electrodes, and Joule heating leads to a gas velocity of 22 m/s in the rst case at 4000 K (to be compared with 90 m/s yielded by the code). The difference can be explained by regarding the change of temperature prole as a function of time. IV. CONCLUSION In most of the low-voltage circuit breakers, arc restrikes or arc reignition is one of the most critical phenomena that prevents the devices from performing an efcient current limitation and short-circuit current interruption operation. Our approach was both experimental and numerical, and focused in this paper on investigating the physical mechanism and the thermodynamic conditions leading to arc restrikes. Thus, it was demonstrated that the backward arc current transfer takes place though a residual current on the order of 1 A in the arcing contact region. A temperature of 4200 K was experimentally derived from the electrical conductivity deduced from small current measurements. The numerical simulation showed that the critical quantity was the current density, and it was found at a value of 5 A/cm . Furthermore, the energy removal by the thermal conduction in the gas and through gas mass ow appears to have a minor role compared with gas-electrode interaction.

Christian Fi evet was born in France in 1962. He received the Ph.D. degree in plasma physics from the University of Orsay, France, in 1989. His Ph.D. work consisted of studying a laser-driven plasma in the eld of controlled fusion. Since 1989, he has worked at Schneider Electric Research Center, Grenoble, France, on arc physics in circuit breakers.

Michel Barrault was born in France in 1937. After studying in Paris until 1957, he studied engineering and graduated in the U.K. in 1960. He then taught for 12 years at Liverpool University, U.K., while doing research in controlled fusion, and then arc plasmas. He joined Merlin Gerin, Grenoble, France, in 1980, as Head of the Research Department, and is presently Scientic Director for the Schneider Electric Group, Grenoble.

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Pierre Ch evrier was born in France in 1963. He received the degree in applied mathematics engineering from the University of Grenoble (IMAG), France, in 1986, and the Doctors degree in 1990. He presently works at Schneider Electric Research Center, Grenoble. Since 1987, his main research activity has been arc modeling.

Pascale Petit was born in France in 1963. She received the degree in aerospace engineering from the Supaero School in 1985, and the Doctors degree in 1990. She has been working at Schneider Electric Research Center, Grenoble, France, since 1990 in the eld of hydrodynamic phenomena in circuit breakers.