Design Method of Electromagnetic Mechanism for Vacuum Contactors by Using Twice Orthogonal Analyses with Multi-Physical Simulation

Abstract

The electromagnetic mechanism as a kind of operating mechanism has been widely used in the low-voltage contactors and circuit breakers. The objective of this paper is to propose a design method of the electromagnetic mechanism for the vacuum contactors. Both opening and closing characteristic were designed. A twice orthogonal analyses method was been used to determine the dimension parameters of mechanism within the required dimension restriction. Both the static and dynamic characteristics of the electromagnetic mechanism have been calculated by a multi-physical simulation. Moreover, the experiments were carried out to verify the validity of the simulation and the dynamic characteristic of the designed mechanism. Based on both the simulation and the experiments, a miniaturized and low-power electromagnetic mechanism for the vacuum contactors had been developed.