Resistance Characteristics of Arc in Long Air Gap

Arc resistance is an important parameter for characterizing long arcs in air, and its laboratory testing is of importance for accurate arc modeling of electromagnetic transient caused by short circuit fault. Therefore, we constructed an experimental system to study the cha- racteristics of long AC arc in air. Driven by currents of 10 kA or 40 kA (root mean square value), the system produces arcs with different initial lengths of 1 m, 2 m and 4 m, and the movement of the arcs are captured by a high-speed camera. After performing experiments using the system, we carried out analysis and comparisons of the arc resistance of arcs with different lengths and different currents, as well as a study of the relationship between the macro-morphology and the resistance of the arcs. Conclusions were drawn from the experimental re- sults: the arc voltage had obvious saturation characteristics; the arc resistance increased with the increase of arc length and the decrease of current; the arcs bended or extended significantly in time and the peak arc voltage within a single cycle increased correspondingly; the arcs had voltage and current in the same phase. In the end, a formula of arc resistance based on the experiment results is derived.