IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS AND PACKAGING TECHNOLOGIES, VOL. 30, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2007
375
Analysis of the Interruption Process
of Molded Case Circuit Breakers
Xingwen Li, Degui Chen, Senior Member, IEEE, Yunfeng Wang, Qian Wang, and Yingsan Geng
Abstract—To the optimization design of molded case circuit
breakers (MCCBs), it is important and necessary to simulate
the interruption process and analyze the characteristics. A set
of differential equations can describe the interactive coupled
phenomena of electric circuit, electromagnetic field and mechanism motion system in MCCB. First, with virtual prototyping
technology, the simulation model for the operation mechanism
of MCCB can be built, and experiments have been carried out
to verify its validity. Then, with the existence of electrodynamic
repulsion force, the interruption process of the MCCB has been
investigated with the influence of arc voltage, closing phase angle,
prospective current, mechanism starting motion time and blow
open force. It demonstrates the proposed method is effective and
is capable of evaluating the new design of MCCB products.
Index Terms—Blow open force, circuit breaker, interruption
process, repulsion force, virtual prototyping technology.
I. INTRODUCTION
M
OLDED case circuit breakers (MCCBs) are widely
used in low voltage electrical distribution systems, the
breaking technique of which is based on current limitation.
When a fault current comes, if the electrodynamic repulsive
force exceeds the spring force, the contacts will separate first
and the arc will appear. At the same time, a force, named
blow open force, which is produced by a net pressure on the
moving contact, will act on contacts and continue to accelerate the contacts apart from each other, together with the
action of electrodynamic repulsion force. Then, the operation
mechanism will begin to move after a short interval for the
tripping process of release, and drive the moving contact to its
final position. During the process, arc will elongate between
contacts and enter the quenching chamber with the help of
Lorentz force and/or gas dynamic force, which may lead to
the rapid rise of arc voltage and allow the retention of the
arc voltage at a sufficient value while absorbing the energy
produced. It seems that the interruption process of MCCB is a
very complicated and interactive coupled phenomena among
electric circuit, electromagnetic field, and mechanism motion
Manuscript received May 8, 2005; revised March 10, 2007. This work was
supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant
50507016. This work was recommended for publication by Associate Editor
J. McBride upon evaluation of the reviewers comments.
X. Li, D. Chen, and Y. Geng are with the State Key Laboratory of Electrical
Insulation and Power Equipment, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049,
China (e-mail: jds20@mail.xjtu.edu.cn).
Y. Wang is with Changshu Switches Manufacture, Ltd., Changshu 215500,
China.
Q. Wang is with Applied Materials, Inc., Xi’an 710075, China.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCAPT.2007.900051
system. Especially, the motion status of the moving contact
determines the interruption performance of MCCB to a great
extent. Therefore, investigation on the interruption process is
significant to analyze and design new MCCB products.
Various experimental and theoretical papers reported the
study of low voltage circuit breakers. Slepian proposed the
method of arc quenching with splitter plates [1], which is
still widely used in low voltage electric apparatus. Lindmayer
analyzed the influence of contact material and chamber wall
materials on the arc interruption process [2]. In literature [3],
the influences of the properties of contact material, the configuration of arc chamber, and the arrangements of contact system
on arc interruption characteristics were reviewed. McBride
investigated the influence of gas flow and gas composition on
the arc root mobility [4], and reviewed the arcing phenomena
including arc column, arc root, arc electrode, arc motion, etc. in
low voltage current limiting circuit breakers [5]. Takikawa [6]
and Takeuchi [7] studied the distribution of temperature in the
cross section of an arc column between separate contacts with
spectroscopic detecting systems. Brdys studied the low voltage
electric arc dynamics by magnetic diagnostics in a low voltage
circuit breaker [8]. In our previous work, experimental investigation were carried out to analyze the influence of gassing
material on the arc motion characteristics with the optical fiber
measurement system and spectrum diagnostics system, on the
other hand, 3-D magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) model of arc
was developed to study the effects of the arc ignition location,
venting size and gassing material on arc behavior [9], [10].
Karetta proposed a 3-D MHD model for arc chambers consisting of two arc runners and insulating walls [11]. With a 2-D
model, Rachard [12] analyzed the influence of the magnetic
force on the shape and displacement of the arc. Swierczynski
developed a 3-D model to investigate the arc motion with the
influence of external magnetic field, plasma composition, and
transport properties [13]. Lindmayer simulated the process of
arc-splitting between metal plates in low voltage arc chutes
[14]. Without calculating the motion of operation mechanism
simultaneously, i.e., neglecting the interaction between operation mechanism and moving contact, Stammberger simulated
the temporal behavior of circuit breakers and motor starters
[15]. The effects of the configuration of arc chamber and
operation mechanism on the current limiting performance of
MCCB were investigated in [16].
However, due to the complexity, studies of the interruption
process of MCCB and the influence of relevant factors are less
well carried out. This paper is devoted to model the whole interruption process of MCCB, and especially to analyze the motion status of moving contact. To one MCCB with the rated
current 63 A, first, with commercial virtual prototyping design
1521-3331/$25.00 © IEEE
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS AND PACKAGING TECHNOLOGIES, VOL. 30, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2007
Fig. 2. Calculation result of force variation with current and open angle.
moving contact, contacts will begin to separate in advance before the mechanism moves, usually. Then, the moving contact
continues to move around axis O with the influence of electrodynamic repulsion force, blow open force and contact spring. At
the same time, once the release trips and make latch operate to
unlock the tripping device. With the action of main spring, the
tripping device will rotate clockwise around O . Then linkage
h and g will drive the contact support to rotate around O until
the moving contact and operation mechanism reach their final
positions. It demonstrates that, in the interruption process, the
motion status of moving contact mostly depends on the joint
operation of electrodynamic repulsion force, blow open force,
contact spring, and operation mechanism.
Fig. 1. Analysis model.
B. Calculation Method for Electrodynamic Repulsion Force
software ADAMS, the basic simulation model of the operation mechanism was built, the validity of which also was verified experimentally. Then, based on the above basic model and
adding the electrodynamic repulsion force acting on the moving
contact, the model of the interruption process simulation can
be developed by extending the software with self-written routines to solve the interactive coupled differential equations of
electric circuit, electromagnetic field and operation mechanism
system of MCCB. Finally, the effects of arc voltage, closing
phase angle, prospective current, mechanism starting motion
time, and blow open force on the interruption process of the
MCCB were investigated, respectively. It demonstrates the proposed method is effective and is capable of evaluating the new
design of MCCB products.
II. ANALYSIS MODEL AND METHODS
A. Analysis Model
Fig. 1 shows the model of MCCB in ADAMS software and
its corresponding operation mechanism schematic sketch.
It can be seen that the mechanism consists of contact support f, linkage g and h, tripping device k, latch m, handle 1,
and main spring 2. Contact force is provided by fixing a spring
on rotation axis O. When the fault current comes, if the electrodynamic repulsion force exceeds the spring force acting on
In literature [17], [18], with 3-D finite element nonlinear analysis, according to the equations among current-magnetic fieldrepulsion force and taking into account the ferromagnet, contact
bridge model was introduced to simulate the current constriction between contacts, so Lorentz and Holm force acting on the
moving contact can be combined to calculate. Coupled with circuit equations, the opening time of movable contact also can be
obtained using iteration with the restriction of contact force. The
arc column between contacts was modeled by a homogeneous
solid conductor with constant electrical conductivity.
To simulate the whole interruption process of MCCB, it is
necessary to know the quantitative relation of electrodynamic
repulsion force with the open angle of the moving contact and
current values. Once the contact separates, Holm force will disis involved. Then, according
appear, and only Lorentz force
to the above mentioned method, within the whole range of open
can be
angle of moving contact and current, data grid for
obtained with the variations of and . The calculation result is
shown in Fig. 2, where and vary from 1 to 11 kA and from
10 to 40 , respectively.
In addition, to the MCCB, it is the opening torque that accelerates the moving contact, so the calculation result is the corresponding equivalent force acting on the far end of moving contact from the rotation axis. From the figure, it seems that there is
less difference of the force value when the open angle is equal
to 10 and 20 .
LI et al.: INTERRUPTION PROCESS OF MOLDED CASE CIRCUIT BREAKERS
377
During the simulation of the interruption process, to certain
open angle and current, interpolation method is used to get the
corresponding force value.
C. Calculation Method for Blow Open Force
Apart from electrodynamic repulsion force, also, many researchers carried out some valuable works on blow open force.
In [19], an experimental device was built to study the influence on the measured forces including electrodynamic repulsion
force and blow open force of the contact material, the duration of
the current pulse, the polarity of the electrodes, etc. In [20], the
authors presented the results of theoretical and experimental investigation of the phenomena of electrical contact repulsion and
its associated blow off characteristics at high currents. In [21],
according to the relationship among gas pressure, arc temperature and arc electrical conductivity of regular stable arcs, the
authors provided rough estimation of gas pressure values, assuming 70% of arc power is consumed for arc radiation. In literature [22], to investigate the blow open process of small size
contactor, whose moving contact has vertical motion, Zhou proacting
posed one formula to describe the blow open force
on the moving contact, as shown in (1), where ( 70%) is the
percentage of the electrical power that is converted into radiation, is the arc current, is the arc voltage, is the emission
is the
coefficient of the plasma at atmospheric pressure,
cross section area of the arc chamber or the arc, is the contact gap, is the cross section area of contact surface and
is 1 atm. It should be noted that 3.0 10 W m is assigned
to in the paper, according to the assumption that the plasma
emission coefficient is only a function of plasma average pressure at an average plasma temperature of 17 000 K [22]
(1)
It should be noted that (1) still has certain limitation to calculate the blow open force precisely. In addition, 3-D MHD arc
simulation together with the corresponding experiments seems
one possible way to solve the problem.
Typically, the blow open force is negligible. However, in the
paper, to study the effect of blow open force on interruption
process of MCCB theoretically, (1) is acceptable to evaluate the
blow open force acting on the moving contact.
D. Arc Voltage Definition and Electric Circuit Solution
The characteristic of arc voltage is quite complex, which
is mostly related to arc length and the process of arc-splitting
between splitter plates. Fig. 3 shows one group of typical experimental arc current and voltage waveforms of the analyzed
MCCB with 10 kA prospective short circuit current (effective
value), which is provided by the capacitor bank circuit. The
peak value of the arc voltage is 245 V. From the figure, neglecting the arc immobile period, the arc voltage can be defined
by the following three stages (Fig. 4).
1) A time elapses between the start of the short circuit
and the opening of the contacts, which depends on the
relationship between the electrodynamic repulsion force
and the initial contact force.
Fig. 3. Typical experimental curve of arc current and voltage of the MCCB.
Fig. 4. Definition of the arc voltage.
2) The arc moves from the contacts and accelerates towards
the splitter plates, and the arc voltage increases almost
linearly. This is related to the arc running time .
3) The arc enters the splitter plates and remains there for a
interval up to arc extinguishment, and the arc voltage
almost maintains a constant value .
In addition, means the total time for release and driving
parts motion, called operation mechanism starting time. That is
instant, the tripping device will be unlocked and
to say, at
the operation mechanism will begin to move. In paper [23], we
presented a method for calculating the dynamic characteristics
of a magnetic release in molded case circuit breaker.
In the paper, only single-phase short circuit is considered.
Therefore, the electric circuit equation can be expressed as (2),
where and are inductance and resistance, respectively,
is the effective value of source voltage and equal to 220 V, is
is the arc
the closing phase angle, is the arc current and
voltage.
can be described by the above-mentioned method. According to specified standard about the relationship between
prospective current and power factor, together with , and
can be solved. Then, with Runge–Kutta method, the arc current
value variation with time can be obtained. Here, it is assumed
that the arc will extinguish just after the current goes through
zero at the first time
(2)
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS AND PACKAGING TECHNOLOGIES, VOL. 30, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2007
Fig. 5. Calculation method for simulation of interruption process.
E. Simulation of the Interruption Process
ADAMS program, used to mechanical dynamics simulation,
can automatically build Lagrange motion functions with multiplier and their corresponding restriction functions for all rigid
and flexible bodies in one system [24], as shown in (3)
with
Fig. 6. Variation of angular displacement of contact support with time.
(3)
where
is kinetic energy, is the whole generalized coordinates of the system, is Lagrange multiplier, is generalized
force, and is the number of the bodies.
By solving the set of the differential equations and restriction
functions, the motion and force parameters, such as displacement, velocity and acceleration, etc. of each body in the system
can be evaluated through ADAMS.
In the paper, coupled mechanism motion, electric circuit
equation with electromagnetic field by embedding some
self-programmed codes into ADAMS, the dynamic simulation
of the interruption process of the MCCB has been implemented,
as shown in Fig. 5 [25].
Through the interface provided by ADAMS, the open angle
of the moving contact and the contact gap can be obtained. Together with the FEM calculation results for the electrodynamic
force and circuit equation, codes have been programmed to evalinstant. Then, the calculated magnetic
uate the force at
force and/or blow open force can be regarded as parameters of
mechanism motion equations, as shown in (3). Therefore, the
whole interruption process can be predicted by the bidirectional
iteration process with time.
III. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENT ON THE
OPERATION MECHANISM MOTION
First, neglecting the effect of the electrodynamic repulsion
force and blow open force, the model was built with reasonable
restriction relationships based on the realistic MCCB, as shown
in Fig. 1(a). Then, the operation mechanism motion can be well
simulated.
At the same time, in order to evaluate the value of friction
coefficients, and verify the validity of simulation model, experiments were done by fixing an angular displacement sensor on
axis O [Fig. 1(b)] under the case of free tripping (without load
current).
In the ADAMS software, we can assign reasonable friction
coefficients on movable parts. According to our experience and
some references from the ADAMS user guide, generally, the
friction coefficients may be adjusted from 0.1 to 0.5 to be consistent with the experimental result. Fig. 6 shows the experimental
TABLE I
CALCULATION CONDITION
and simulation results of the angular displacement of the contact support variation with the time.
Therefore, based on the built model, the interruption process
of the MCCB can be investigated in detail with the presence of
self-programmed codes to couple the circuit, electromagnetic
field and operation mechanism motion equations.
IV. INFLUENCE OF SEVERAL FACTORS ON
THE INTERRUPTION PROCESS
A. Arc Voltage Characteristics
First, we analyze the influence on the interruption process of
, which is the arc running time and is mostly determined by the
fault current, the configurations of arc chamber and current carrying conductors. The detailed calculation condition is shown
in Table I.
Fig. 7(a) and (b) show the calculation results of electrodynamic repulsion force, angular velocity of contact support and
moving contact, arc current variation with time, when is equal
to 4 ms and 2 ms, respectively. Fig. 7(c) shows arc current and
voltage calculation results including the case of closing phase
30 .
angle
From the calculation results, the following points can be
obtained.
1) With the help of the electrodynamic repulsion force, the
moving contact moves earlier than the contact support
of the operation mechanism.
2) Just while the moving contact begin to move, the value
of the electrodynamic repulsion force decreases sharply
at point A [Fig. 7(a)], which results from the disappearance of the Holm force due to the current constriction
between contacts.
LI et al.: INTERRUPTION PROCESS OF MOLDED CASE CIRCUIT BREAKERS
379
Fig. 8. Influence of the closing phase angle on the interruption process.
B. Closing Phase Angle
Fig. 7. Influence of arc voltage on the interruption process.
3) At point B [Fig. 7(a)], the contact support catches up
with the moving contact, and the angular velocity of the
contact support has an obvious reduction due to the additional load from the moving contact. After that, the
contact support will drive the moving contact with the
same velocity.
means the faster arc moving velocity,
4) Decreasing
which results in more rapid rising of the arc voltage.
Thus, the current limiting performance is stronger,
which produces less electrodynamic repulsion force
acting on moving contact yet. Correspondingly, the
velocity of the operation mechanism will be reduced
due to the higher load from the moving contact.
In addition, increasing the peak value of the arc voltage ,
the similar influence may occur.
Based on the calculation condition as shown in Table I and
4 ms, Fig. 8(a) and (b) show the calculation results of
arc current, electrodynamic repulsion force, angular velocity of
contact support and moving contact variation with time, when
is equal to 30 and 60 , respectively. Fig. 7(c) also shows the
arc current and voltage variation with time when is equal to
30 .
The following points can be seen from these results.
1) Increasing the closing phase angle, the is reduced and
the peak value of the short circuit current occurs earlier.
2) Increasing the closing phase angle, because the current
and the corresponding electrodynamic repulsion force
drop more quickly, the trend of the backward motion
of the moving contact becomes more obvious. From
Fig. 8(b), the velocity of the moving contact begins to
drop from point A until the contact support drives it to
move with the same velocity at point B.
C. Prospective Current
The effects of prospective current on the interruption process
may be studied with the assumption of the same and values
of arc voltage. The detailed calculation condition is shown in
Table II.
Fig. 9(a)–(c) show the calculation results of arc current, electrodynamic repulsion force, angular velocity of contact sup-
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS AND PACKAGING TECHNOLOGIES, VOL. 30, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2007
TABLE II
CALCULATION CONDITION
Fig. 10. Influence of the operation mechanism starting time t on the interruption process.
TABLE III
CALCULATION CONDITION
called over travel. The corresponding period of the angle
is from point A to B [Fig. 9(a)]. After that, the contact support will drive the moving contact with the same
velocity.
2) When is equal to 2.5 kA, the moving contact tries to
open with the action of electrodynamic repulsion force
at point A [Fig. 9(b)]. However, because the Holm force
disappears once the contacts separate, the total force
acting on the moving contact will decrease sharply, and
the moving contact will move backward until the contact support begins to drive it at point B [Fig. 9(b)].
3) When is equal to 10 kA, the produced electrodynamic
repulsion force is large enough to accelerate the moving
contact without the help of the contact support. In addition, if the prospective current is higher than 10 kA, the
interruption process still can be estimated by the numerical method, and the result will be similar to the case of
10 kA except that the angular velocity of the moving
contact will be higher due to the larger electrodynamic
repulsion force acting on it.
4) A critical current value is related to decide whether the
moving contact moves backward or not.
D. Operation Mechanism Starting Time
Fig. 9. Influence of the prospective current on the interruption process.
port and moving contact variation with time, when the effective value of prospective current is equal to 1, 2.5 and 10 kA,
respectively.
From the results, the following points can be seen.
1) When is equal to 1 kA, the electrodynamic repulsion
force is so less that it could not overcome the contact
force. Thus, the moving contact would not open in advance until the contact support moves over an angle
When the effective value of prospective current is equal to
4 kA, to different operation mechanism starting time , the calculation results of angular velocity of moving contact and contact support are shown in Fig. 10 under the condition shown in
Table III. In addition, curve 2 presents the -coordination of
9 ms.
point A [see Fig. 1(a)] on the moving contact when
From Fig. 10, increasing , the moving contact begins to
move backward at point A due to the gradual reduction of the
current and the corresponding electrodynamic repulsion force,
as well the action of the contact spring. At point B, the contact
support will drive the moving contact with the same velocity.
LI et al.: INTERRUPTION PROCESS OF MOLDED CASE CIRCUIT BREAKERS
381
blow open force, the motion status of the moving contact
differs obviously. The moving contact will move backward at a certain middle position and the maximum position, respectively.
4) In addition, during the interruption process, if the
moving contact becomes to moves backward, and even
contact weld may occur, it will produce serious accident.
According to the above analysis, in order to improve
the performance of MCCB products, it is important and
necessary to take effective steps to avoid the possible
contact falling back within its whole travel.
V. CONCLUSION
Fig. 11. Influence of the blow open force on the interruption process.
E. Blow Open Force
To the case of
9 ms mentioned in Section IV-D, the
influence of blow open force is investigated.
Although the above-mentioned calculation method [see (1)]
for blow open force is a little rough, it is available to carry out
some interesting study of the influence of blow open force on
the interruption process qualitatively.
The calculation results are shown in Fig. 11, including equivalent total force, blow open force and electrodynamic repulsion
force, current, angular velocity of moving contact and contact
support, -coordination of point A [see Fig. 1(a)] variation with
the time.
From the results, these points can be drawn.
1) While the contacts separate, the value of electrodynamic
repulsion force decreases, but the blow open force occurs, whose value is much higher than the electrodynamic repulsion force. Moreover, with the increase of
arc gap, the blow open force decreases rapidly.
2) With the action of the electrodynamic repulsion force
and blow open force, the moving contact may move to its
maximum position. But, with the reduction of the above
two forces, due to the action of contact spring and the
immobile of the operation mechanism, the moving contact will move backward until the operation mechanism
begin to move and the contact support drive it with the
same velocity.
3) With regard to the calculation condition, compared with
the results with and without the consideration of the
1) With virtual prototype technology, the basic simulation
model of the operation mechanism can be built, the validity of which also has been verified experimentally.
Then, based on the basic model, the model of the interruption process simulation can be developed by extending the software with self-written routines to solve
the interactive coupled differential equations of electric
circuit, electromagnetic field, and mechanism motion
system of MCCB.
2) The influence of arc voltage, closing phase angle,
prospective current, operation mechanism starting time,
and blow open force on the interruption process has
been simulated and analyzed in detail.
3) The blow open force has a significant effect on the interruption process. It is necessary to investigate it further
to get a better method to present it.
4) If the operation mechanism starting time is too late, the
moving contact will fall backward, which has a great
disadvantageous effect on the interruption performance.
5) The proposed method is effective and is capable of evaluating new designs and optimization designs of MCCB
products.
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Xingwen Li was born in Shaanxi, China, in 1978.
He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in
electrical engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, in 1999, 2001, and 2006,
respectively.
He was a Visiting Scholar with the Department
of Information Systems, Osaka University, Osaka,
Japan, from 2001 to 2002. Currently, he is an
Associate Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University,
Xi’an, China. His research interests focus on power
equipment.
Degui Chen (SM’98) was born in Shanghai, China,
in 1933. He graduated from Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China in 1955.
From 1983 to 1984, he was a Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool,
Liverpool, U.K. Currently, he is a Professor at Xi’an
Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China. He has published
more than 150 papers in China and abroad. His
research interests include low-voltage apparatus
including switching arc model, arc movement,
visual simulation of interrupting process, and
electromagnetic phenomena.
Dr. Chen is a Council Member of the China Electrotechnical Society (CES),
Chairman of the Low Voltage Apparatus Committee of China, and the Director
of the Expert Group, Chinese Low-voltage Apparatus Industry Association.
Yunfeng Wang was born in Jiangsu, China, in 1979.
He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical
engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an,
China, in 2002 and 2005, respectively.
He is currently an Electrical Engineer with
Changshu Switches Manufacture, Ltd., Changshu,
China.
Qian Wang was born in Xi’an, China, in 1981.
She received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical
engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an,
China, in 2003 and 2006, respectively.
She is currently a Mechanical Engineer with Applied Materials, Inc., Xi’an.
Yingsan Geng was born in Henan, China, in 1963.
He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in
electrical engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China, in 1984, 1987, and 1997,
respectively.
He is now Director of the Department of Electric
Machine and Apparatus, Xi’an Jiaotong University.
His research interests focus on the theory and application of electric apparatus.