Study of the influence of arc ignition position on arc motion in low-voltage circuit breaker

Arc-motion process is crucial to the interruption capability of the low-voltage circuit breaker. First, to a simplified chamber with full open venting, with a 2-D optical-fiber arc-motion measurement system, experiments were done to measure the arc-motion velocity in order to analyze the influence of different arc ignition position on the arc motion. It demonstrates that the larger the volume behind the arc is, the slower the arc moves. In addition, the influence of the gassing material on arc-motion velocity was also studied experimentally. Then, the commercial computational fluid dynamics software FLUENT was adapted and modified to develop a 2-D magneto-hydrodynamic model of the arc with the same conditions as the experimental model. The simulation result was consistent with the experiment conclusions.