The development of actuators for mechanical circuit breakers

Paper title: A comparison between moving magnet and moving coil actuators for vacuum interrupters. Paper abstract: Medium voltage direct current (MVDC) systems have been proposed for a variety of applications including offshore wind farm collector system and transport electrification. An efficient and reliable hybrid DC circuit breaker is critical for MVDC system protection. The operating speed of the hybrid DC circuit breaker heavily relies on the speed of the mechanical circuit breaker. Two types of actuators: moving magnet actuator and moving coil actuator using electromagnetic interaction are compared in this paper for the operation of a medium voltage vacuum interrupter. The Finite Element software package COMSOL is used to simulate the static and dynamic performance of each actuator topology. The paper focuses on comparing the advantages and disadvantages of these two actuator topologies particularly for vacuum interrupter application. The moving coil actuator is found to have better dynamic performance and is more suitable for medium voltage vacuum interrupter application.