Self-Magnetic Field Calculation in Modeling the Current-Carrying Electrode System With Plasma Jet and Cathode Spot Motion in a Vacuum Arc

The method of magnetic field calculation and its influence on simulating the motion of cathode spots (CSs) in a vacuum arc were investigated in this paper. A method based on coordinate transformation and magnetic field superposition principle was proposed. In this method, the influence of current passing through an electrode rod and a contact plate was taken into account. Comparison was made between the proposed method and two simplified methods which were on the basis of the Biot–Savart law. Moreover, simulation results of CS motion with magnetic field calculated by different methods were shown and compared. Investigation results indicated that current passing through the contact plate and electrode rod could significantly influence the magnetic field and thus influence the simulation results of CS motion. Furthermore, it was shown that the proposed magnetic field calculation method had higher calculation accuracy with acceptable consumption of calculation time.