Failure Analysis of Vacuum Circuit Breaker with Permanent Magnet Actuator

The circuit breaker plays an important role of control and protection in the power supply and distribution system. The reliability of the circuit breaker directly affects the stability of the power system. Because of the simple structure and strong controllability, permanent magnet actuator is an ideal operating mechanism for the vacuum circuit breaker to apply in the controlled switching and the speed regulation. To investigate the reliability of vacuum circuit breakers with permanent magnet actuator (PMA), the fault of vacuum circuit breaker is analyzed by the method of Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). According to the structural model of the vacuum circuit breaker, the FMEA analysis results and the FTA analysis model of the vacuum circuit breaker are discussed in this paper, which are helpful to improve the reliability of the vacuum circuit breaker.