Design and experimental investigation on the electromagnetic repulsion mechanism of high speed vacuum disconnect switch

The development of a large-scale HVDC power grid requires a reliable, fast and low-loss hybrid HVD circuit breaker. The high speed disconnect switch is an essential part of hybrid HVDC circuit breaker concept. The objective of this paper is to design an electromagnetic repulsion mechanism for high speed vacuum disconnect switch of a hybrid HVDC circuit breaker and meet the premise that the motion distance of the moving contact is larger than 10mm in the first 2ms. A multi-physics FEM simulation model that can predict the dynamic characteristics of high speed vacuum disconnect switch with a high degree of accuracy is developed. The parameters of the electromagnetic repulsion mechanism are analyzed and a brute force optimization algorithm is implemented to obtain the optimal model of the electromagnetic repulsion force mechanism. The developed model was validated experimentally with a built a high speed vacuum disconnect switch prototype and the results show that the proposed model can be used to accurately predict the performances of high speed vacuum disconnect switch.