Electric field optimization design of the vacuum interrupter based on the Tabu search algorithm

During interrupting in the vacuum interrupter, the reignition between the contact and the shield are influenced by the shape of the contact and the size of the shield. The design for the contact and the shield is an intricate global optimization problem. In this paper, the Tabu search (TS) approach is used to optimize the contacts for the 35 kV vacuum interrupter. Optimization design is based on the electric field computation using the finite element method (FEM). By solving the inverse problem, the optimizations of the contacts are achieved, the reasonable distribution of the electric field is obtained. Based on the combinatorial optimization TS algorithm, an improved universal approach for the continuous variables global optimization is proposed. The feasibility and practicability are verified by the experimental results.