Hybrid circuit breaker （HCB） technology based on a vacuum interrupter and a SF6 interrupter in series has become a new research direction because of the low-carbon requirements for high voltage switches. The vacuum interrupter has an excellent ability to deal with the steep rising part of the transient recovery voltage （TRV）, while the SF6 interrupter can withstand the peak part of the voltage easily. An HCB can take advantage of the interrupters in the current interruption process. In this study, an HCB model based on the vacuum ion diffusion equations, ion density equation, and modified Cassie-Mayr arc equation is explored. A simulation platform is constructed by using a set of software called the alternative transient program （ATP）. An HCB prototype is also designed, and the short circuit current is interrupted by the HCB under different action sequences of contacts. The voltage distribution of the HCB is analyzed through simulations and tests. The results demonstrate that if the vacuum interrupter withstands the initial TRV and interrupts the post-arc current first, then the recovery speed of the dielectric strength of the SF6 interrupter will be fast. The voltage distribution between two interrupters is determined by their post-arc resistance, which happens after current-zero, and subsequently, it is determined by the capacitive impedance after the post-arc current decays to zero.
The plasma status of vacuum arc before arc current zero,has a great influence on the interruption performance of the vacuum circuit breakers.In this paper,a vacuum arc model in a short gap was established based on the magnet hydrodynamic(MHD) and a common computational fluid dynamics(CFD) software was utilized to specially investigate the properties of this arc.The spatial distributions of plasma pressure,plasma density,ion axial velocity, and axial current density in front of the anode surface of vacuum arc in this case were obtained.Simulation results indicate that:from the cathode to the anode,both of the plasma pressure and the plasma density increase gradually,and the plasma axial velocity decreases gradually;the axial current density in front of anode has a large radial gradient, and the maximum value is still smaller than the threshold current density for the anode-spot formation,thus,the anode is still passive.The comparison between the plasma density of simulation and the CMOS images taken by the high-speed camera indicates that they are in reasonable agreement with each other and demonstrates the feasibility of the vacuum arc model.
