Experimental Study on Deflection Behavior of Vacuum Arcs Under the Influence of External Transverse Magnetic Field

In real power system, when the three-phase short-circuit fault occurs, the vacuum arc in one phase will be influenced by the transverse magnetic field generated by neighbor phases and bus bars. This kind of effect is the main cause of the unstable arc and deflected erosion of contact plates, which leads to the failure of vacuum circuit breakers interruption. The objective of this paper is to get more insight into the influence of external transverse magnetic field (ETMF) on vacuum arc’s behavior. The experiments were conducted in a demountable vacuum chamber with pressure about $10^{-4}$ Pa. The cup-type axial magnetic field contacts were used, whose material was pure copper and the diameter is 35 mm. The uniform ETMF in the arc region was generated by two parallel bulk permanent magnets. The experiments were conducted under different ETMFs (0, 15, and 25 mT) and current levels (1-, 2.5-, and 4-kA rms) with different gap distances (6, 8.5, and 11 mm). The videos of arc column were recorded by a high-speed charge-coupled device camera. Under the action of ETMF, the vacuum arc got deflected. Due to the retrograde motion of cathode spots and Ampere force acting on arc column, the deflection behaviors during three typical periods (that is, initial, peak value, and close-to-current-zero period) were different. Moreover, the deflection level of vacuum arc at current peak value moment was greatly impacted by ETMF and gap distance. Larger the ETMF and gap distance were, higher the deflection level at current peak value moment was. The simulation results of arc deflection based on magnetic-hydrodynamic model were in agreement with experimental results in trends.