Study of influence factors on current limiting characteristics of self pinch effect type liquid metal current limiter

The liquid metal current limiter (LMCL) based on self pinch effect has a good application prospect with the merits of self detection, self-healing property after fault exclusion, the environment friendly medium, simple design and small volume. In this paper, the influence factors on current limiting characteristics of LMCL was experimental investigated by measuring the circuit current and the arc voltage of LMCL under different conditions during the current limiting process, which provided reference for optimum design of LMCL structure. The experimental results indicate that the current limiting effect is improved with the reduction of pre arcing time and the increase of arc voltage, and the pre arcing time and arc voltage are influenced by the prospective short current and structure parameters, during the experiment. It was found that the arc pressure can adversely affect the current limiting characteristics under high current, so a structure with pressure release space was proposed to solve this problem; and the current limiting effect was improved effectively.