Overview of Current Research into Low-Voltage Circuit Breakers

The low-voltage circuit breaker has been used for many years for network and persons protection. The review papers existing on these devices generally deal with electrical aspects or macroscopic information on the arc but few concern the “fine” understanding of arc behaviour from its ignition between the opening contact to the current limitation stage due to its presence in the splitter plates. In this paper, we focus our attention on this point. We firstly describe the working of such devices, their limitations and the different phenomena occurring during breaking. Then, the difficulties involved with understanding the behaviour of the arc are identified and discussed in two main sections: physical arc characteristics and the study of arc movement during the breaking process. A review of the papers dealing with these subjects is proposed: both experimental and theoretical results from the literature are confronted and discussed and technical difficulties identified.