Calculation of Pressure Rise in Electrical Installations Due to Internal Arcing Taking Into Account Arc Energy Absorbers

A means to reduce thermal and pressure stress of electrical installations due to internal arcing is the application of arc energy absorbers. Most of them consist of layers of expanded metal with a complex fine structure. The direct consideration of such devices in advanced pressure calculation methods is hardly feasible due to the huge amount of necessary computing capacity. That is why it is reasonable to replace a direct consideration of such absorbers in the calculations by models, which describe in a simplified way the effects of absorbers. The main effects influencing pressure rise are heat absorption and flow resistance. In this contribution, several models describing these effects are presented and implemented in a pressure calculation method, which utilizes a computational fluid dynamics solver to obtain 3-D resolved pressure results. This new approach is applied to some applications and validated by comparing measurements with calculation results.