The process of strong currents interrupting in low voltage vacuum circuit breakers

The paper presents an investigation of the post-arc current within low voltage switching process in vacuum. From the experimental results were deduced the constants fitted for the adopted simplified mathematical one-dimensional post-arc model. By comparison between the experimental and calculated evolution of the post-arc current and transient recovery voltage, in the first /spl mu/s after the current zero moment, one can obtain an efficient tool for predicting the vacuum circuit breaker behavior, or for improving it.