Mathematical model and simulation of gas flow through a porous medium in high breaking capacity fuses

We present a one-dimensional model to describe the gas flow and the heat transfer in high breaking capacity (HBC) fuses. The compressible Euler equations for perfect gas have been used as the basic flow model coupled with a porous medium model taking into account the mechanical interaction between the gas and the silica sand and the heat transfer between hot gas and cold silica sand. In addition, to describe the solid temperature evolution, we introduce the heat equation for the solid. The governing equations are discretized following a finite volume scheme coupled with a fractional step technique and the fluxes are evaluated using the Roe method. The computational fluid dynamics model is used for the numerical investigations of a gas-flow in a porous medium for HBC fuses.

[1]  T. Nielsen,et al.  Modelling evaporating metal droplets in ablation controlled electric arcs , 2001 .

[2]  E. Toro Riemann Solvers and Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics , 1997 .

[3]  Numerical Simulation of Darcy and Forchheimer Force Distribution in a HBC Fuse , 2003 .

[4]  I. F. Macdonald,et al.  Flow through Porous Media-the Ergun Equation Revisited , 1979 .

[5]  H. C. Yee Upwind and Symmetric Shock-Capturing Schemes , 1987 .

[6]  Richard Courant,et al.  Supersonic Flow And Shock Waves , 1948 .

[7]  Pei-Xue Jiang,et al.  Numerical investigation of forced convection heat transfer in porous media using a thermal non-equilibrium model , 2001 .

[8]  A. Ville On the properties of compressible gas flow in a porous media , 1996 .

[9]  W. Rohsenow,et al.  Handbook of Heat Transfer , 1998 .

[10]  H. Johnstone,et al.  Heat and mass transfer in packed beds , 1955 .

[11]  W. Bussière Influence of sand granulometry on electrical characteristics, temperature and electron density during high-voltage fuse arc extinction , 2001 .

[12]  M Claessens,et al.  A computational fluid dynamics simulation of high- and low-current arcs in self-blast circuit breakers , 1997 .

[13]  T. Zhao,et al.  An extension of Darcy's law to non-Stokes flow in porous media , 2000 .

[14]  P. André,et al.  Composition, pressure and thermodynamic properties calculated in plasma formed in insulator vapours of PC and POM at fixed volume , 2002 .

[15]  S. Whitaker The Forchheimer equation: A theoretical development , 1996 .

[16]  Comparison between two- and one-field models for natural convection in porous media , 2001 .

[18]  W. Bussière Mesure des grandeurs (T,Nc,P) au sein du plasma d'arc des fusibles en moyenne tension , 2000 .