Behaviour of copper, tungsten and graphite in circuit breakers
Résumé
In this presentation we compare the behavior of materials used in the circuit breaker contacts: copper, tungsten and graphite. They are submitted to different energy flux and we give the liquid and vapor appearance time it is situated between 1 and 12ns at the cathode and between 15 and 100μs at the anode. The erosion speed resulting of the vaporization is lower than 25m/s at the cathode and 0.25m/s at the anode.