Simplified Internal arc - Structural simulation

Paper in proceeding, 2011

The impact of pressure rise due to an internal arc (IA) event on the structure of a switchgear cubicle is of great importance for a safe design. Switchgear panels are designed for withstanding an internal arc incident as per the testing conditions defined by IEC 62271-200 standard. This paper reports on a calculation procedure employing computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and structural finite element method (S-FEM). The approach is targeting a reduced numerical complexity, straight forward modelling, and stressing as little assumptions as possible. In the proposed method, time varying electric power is used as input along with other parameters for solving mass, momentum and energy equations by CFD. The peak pressure and rise time delivered by transient CFD simulation is needed to perform structural simulation. The structural calculation is performed using dynamic load factor.