3-D Magnetohydrodynamic Modeling of DC Arc in Power System

With the rise of large-scale photovoltaic arrays and dc buses in power systems, dc-arc hazards have raised great concerns. Currently, the IEEE Std. 1584-2002 pertains to arc flashes originating in only ac systems. Little research has been conducted to investigate the theoretical or semiempirical methods to estimate dc arcs. The theoretical method, based on the maximum power transfer theorem, overall produces the estimations on the conservative side; the semiempirical methods are limited by the experiment scale, which cannot provide the comprehensive dc-arc prediction to the industry. This paper presents a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model of dc arcs. The MHD equations are solved by using computational fluid dynamic (CFD) software Code Saturne, which is based on collocated finite volume. The simulation results are compatible with the lab testing. The proposed MHD modeling provides an innovative approach to study dc-arc phenomena.