Simulation of arcs for DC relay considering different impacts

Recently DC relay has been concerned as a key component in DC power distribution, management and control systems like aircraft, new energy vehicle, IT and communication industries. Ordinarily, magnetic force and contact moving speed have great influence on arc behaviours in the breaking process. This paper focuses on the numerical investigation of arc during the contact opening process in a real 400 V/20 A DC relay product coupling with an inductive load circuit. A 3D air arc model based on the magneto-hydrodynamic theory was built and calculated. A method coupling different computational software was used to take the nonlinear permanent magnet and contact opening process into consideration simultaneously. Arc behaviours under different magnetic field and contact opening speed were presented and discussed carefully. It has been found that the increase of the magnetic field is beneficial to the quick build-up of arc length and voltage. Arc breaking duration becomes shorter with the increase in contact opening speed from 63.5 rad s⁻¹ to 94.5 rad s⁻¹, such reduction is less significant with an increase of opening speed from 94.5 rad s⁻¹ to 118.5 rad s⁻¹.