Transient modelling and simulation of the forced arc extinguish period of the circuit breakers

Plasma transport during continuous extinction processes from high-current arcs to fully extinction is an important issue in the study of vacuum arcs. In this research a 3D hybrid plasma model has been developed to study the extinguish period of the DC vacuum arc. The model treats the electrons as a massless fluid and ions as macro particles. The ion-neutral collision processes including both charge exchange collisions and momentum exchange collisions are considered with Monte-Carlo method. By this approach, the vacuum arc model consists of plasma jets ejected from multiple cathode spots is established and the behaviours of ions under the collisions with neutral atoms are simulated. It is shown that a large number of low-speed ions are generated in the interelectrode region due to the chare exchange collisions between ions and neutrals. And as the arc current drops to zero, the proportion of low-speed ions to the total ions at each moment becomes higher and higher.