Turbulent effect of SF6 thermal plasmas inside a puffer-assisted self-blast chamber

In this study, we calculated the whole arcing history of SF₆ thermal plasmas happened inside a puffer-assisted self-blast chamber during the alternative current interruption process with two different turbulence models. It is very difficult to correctly realize all phenomena happened inside the interrupter using the computational schemes; therefore, we have been trying to simplify the physics related in the problem. Because most flows encountered in the process are turbulent, the ability to predict turbulence for this application is invaluable for the engineer to design the chamber reliably. The objective of this paper is to model turbulence by averaging the unsteadiness of the turbulence, which are called Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes models, and to compare the results with pressure and temperature field distributions during the whole arcing history. It was found that the two-equation turbulent model predicts bigger mixing of momentum, heat and species on the arc discharge of this interrupter than the zero-equation model does.