• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.945-950
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• 2001

Vacuum interrupters that is used in various switchgear components such as circuit breakers, distribution switches, contactors, etc. spreads the arc uniformly over the surface of the contacts. The electrode of vacuum interrupters is used sintered Cu-Cr material satisfied with good electrical and mechanical characteristics. Because the closing velocity is 1-3m/s, the deformation of the material of electrodes depends on the strain rate and the dynamic behavior of the sintered Cu-Cr material is a key to investigate the impact characteristics of the electrodes. The dynamic response of the material at the high strain-rate is obtained from the split Hopkinson pressure bar test using cylinder type specimens. Experimental results from both quasi-static and dynamic compressive tests with the split Hopkinson pressure bar apparatus are interpolated to construct the Johnson-Cook equation as the constitutive relation that should be applied to simulation of the dynamic behavior of electrodes. To evaluate impact characteristic of a vacuum interrupter, simulation is carried out with five parameters such as initial velocity, added mass of a movable electrode, wipe spring constant, initial offset of a wipe spring and virtual fixed spring constant.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1994.07b
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• pp.1593-1598
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• 1994

Recently rotary-arc, thermal expansion and their composite interrupters are widely used in the distribution power system because they have lots of advantages in making the larger interrupting capacity, the smaller size, the lighter weight and the less surge. A model interrupter of rotary-arc type, which has constant stroke and thermal expansion volume, was studied by varying the design parameters, i.e. the number of turns of the driving coil, the inner diameter of the moving contact, the gas pressure and the shape of the fixed contact for this project. Short cicuit current interrupting tests were conducted to the model interrupters by varying the requirements from 42% to 175% of the test voltage, interrupting current and transient recovery voltage for the test duty No.4 of 7.2kV 12.5kA single phase test. The pressure rise, minimum and maximum arcing times were analyzed for each model interrupter. All types of model interrupters showed good interrupting performances and sufficient design margins for the ratings.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.65 no.5
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• pp.878-882
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• 2016

These days, SFCLs are being developed in order to limit fault current. However, the superconducting elements that limit the fault current have such problems as capacity increase and require auxiliary devices including cooling device. If devices that comprise the current power network can withstand fault current for at least one cycle, it is possible to limit the fault current with current limiting elements by bypassing it on the fault line. In this study, the fault current limiter was configured with current transformer, vacuum interrupter, and current limiting element. Through the experience, it was confirmed that the fault current was limited within one cycle. The superconducting element, as a current limiting element, limited the fault current by 80 % within one cycle from fault occurrence, and the passive element limited it more than 95 %. Also, through the comparison between resistance curve and power consumption curve, it was confirmed that the current limiting element using a passive element was more stable than the superconducting element that required capacity increase and other auxiliary devices. It was considered that the FCL proposed in this study could limit fault current stably within one cycle from fault occurrence by using the existing power technologies such as fault current detection and solenoid valve operating circuit.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.50-55
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• 2021

Copper-chromium alloys have been used as contact materials of vacuum interrupters in circuit breakers, but new materials with highly stable performance are required to break the high voltage and high current barrier due to the recent increase in breaking capacity. In this paper, a new contact material was fabricated from a ternary alloy instead of existing Cu-Cr alloys. Its breaking performance and endurance were verified from a synthetic test and compared with that of various contact materials. The test results verified that the breaking performance of the new contact material was excellent.

• KEPCO Journal on Electric Power and Energy
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.5-7
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• 2022

KEPCO's plan is undergoing a trial operation to replace the open-loop section with ring main units configuration where underground distribution lines are installed, by linking the multi-way circuit breakers auto (MCA) on the power side of each pad-mounted transformer. However, ring main units application mentioned above may cause the ripple effects, when implementing the configuration without a study of protection coordination. Because ring main units with classical pre-set protection devices contribution in fault condition didn't consider yet. For the reliable ring main units operation, it is necessary to resolve several protection issues such as the protection coordination with substation side, prevention of the transformer inrush current. These issues can radically deteriorate the distribution system reliability Hence, it is essential to design proper protection coordination to reduce these types of problems. This paper presents a scheme of ring main units' configuration and MCA's settings of time-current curves to preserve the performance of protection coordination among the switchgears considering constraints, e.g. prevention of the ripple effects (on the branch section when a transformer failure occurs and the mainline when a branch line failure occurs). It was confirmed that the propagation of the failure for each interrupter segment could be minimized by applying the proposed TCC and the interrupter settings for the MCAs (branch, transformer). Further, it was verified that the undetected area of the distribution automation system (DAS) could be supplemented by having the MCA configurated ring main units operate first, instead of the internal protection equipment in the transformer such as the fuse, STP when a transformer failure occurs.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1994.07b
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• pp.1603-1605
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• 1994

Recently, Gas Circuit Breakers are rapidly replacing Vacuum Circuit Breakers in the medium voltage switchgear. This is due to the improved performance of - GCB in interrupting capability, price, weight, size etc., while the countermeasure to suppress the switching surges of VCB has not been satisfactory. Intensive research works on the GCB have been conducted in the world widely since 1980. Nowadays it is well known that the thermal expansion type GCB can provide- better performance than puffer type in the distribution power system. KERI has conducted researches in the GCB rated at 25.8kV 25kA with Jinkwang Co. using the thermal expantion principle since 1993. In this paper, the calculated results of electric and magnetic fields for the model GCB are presented and analyzed. The effect of permanent magnet used to improve the interruption capabilty at the low current level is also investigated. The design parameters for the interrupter inspected through the short-circuit tests conducted at high power laboratory of KERI.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1995.07c
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• pp.1332-1336
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• 1995

In this paper, the procedures and the results of design and manufacturing technologies, mechanical operating tests, insulation tests and short-circuit tests for 800kV 40kA model GCB are presented. The problems to be solved and the countermeasures for the problems are also proposed to improve the performances the model GCB.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1992.07b
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• pp.952-957
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• 1992

When the circuit-breaker switches off, an electric arc is established between the contacts. It is very important to understand the arc characteristics for the design of a circuit breaker. This article describes the theoretical analysis of the arc characteristics by means of energy integral method when convection dominated low current arcs are produced in the dual-airflow nozzle of a model interrupter. In order to investigate the arc radius, the average electric field strength and the arc voltage, the arc column is divided into two regions, and then the energy conservation equation is applied to the arc in each region together with the axial cold flow mass flux function, steady-state mass balance equation and Ohm's law. The results show good agreements with those of other researchers.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2002.08a
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• pp.91-94
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• 2002

It is important to develop new effective technologies for increasing the interruption capacity and reducing the size of a GCB (Gas Circuit Breaker). It is not easy to test the real GCB model in practice as in theory. Therefore, a simulation tool based on a CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) algorithm has been developed to facilitate an optimization of the interrupter. But the choice of grid is not at all trivial in the complicated geometries like a GCB. In this paper, we have applied a CFD-CAD integration using Cartesian cut-cell method, which is one of the grid generation techniques for dealing with complex and multi-component geometries.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1996.07c
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• pp.1888-1891
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• 1996

Recently, FLIC(Fluid In Cell) method has been widely used for the compressible. flow computation. A program which adopts the FLIC method and can analyze the flow conditions with arc in the interrupter was developed in our team. It was applied to the 800kV class gab circuit breaker for flow conditions with arc, and the results are presented and discussed in this paper.