A 3-D Electrothermal Simulation of the Outdoor Medium-Voltage Circuit Breaker

This paper presents a three-dimensional electrothermal numerical model of the medium voltage outdoor circuit breaker. The model was validated by heat run test performed under the conditions required by IEC 62271-1 and IEC 62271-100 standards, as well as some other specific requirements related to the breaker overload under low ambient temperature conditions and natural cooling. The purpose of this study was to build a numerical model of the medium-voltage circuit breaker that could be successfully applied for the redesign of the breaker for more demanding operating conditions with minimum physical test iterations. The numerical results obtained were found to be in a good agreement with experimental values having the average discrepancy of 3 K with the maximum below 5 K on busbars.