Investigation on the behavior of gainsn liquid metal current limiter

This paper is concerned with the investigation of the behavior of the GaInSn liquid metal current limiter (LMCL), in particular, with effect of the prospective short current, combined with experiment and numerical simulation. It is found that the current limiting characteristics of the LMCL get better with the increase of the prospective current due to the reduction of the reaction time and enhancement of the arc voltage. The reaction time of the LMCL is shortened with the rise of the through current mainly caused by the start of the pinch process in advance and the short of the pinch process duration. The current reversal phenomenon caused by high arc pressure under high prospective current is adverse to the current limitation. A structure of the LMCL with decompression function is proposed to minimize the harmful effect of this phenomenon.