A reliable and efficient black box model of SF6 medium voltage circuit breakers

Several black-box models of circuit breakers have been proposed since the pioneering work by Cassie in 1943. Nevertheless, the nowadays need of a “further” black-box model is due to two main reasons: (i) accurate tools to simulate the complex physics that describes the interruption phenomena in circuit breakers are very CPU intensive and (ii) available black-box models tried to condense in few simple equations the complex physics of circuit breakers but they are inaccurate and do not cope with the full set of working conditions. We deal with SF6 medium voltage breakers proposing a model where the dynamics of the plasma and that of the breaker environment in which the electric arc develops (e.g., power dissipation, puffing, self-blasting) are separately modeled and then properly coupled. The result is an adequately accurate and fast black-box model that remains reliable in a wide set of working conditions as shown by comparisons of simulation and experimental results.