This paper is devoted to the study of electric arc behaviour under the influence of an external magnetic field. This situation is close to that occurring in a low-voltage circuit breaker where an arc, after ignition, is submitted to the magnetic field of the circuit. After a discussion of the literature, we present our contribution. Two different methods are compared to take the magnetic effects into account. Arc displacement in the geometry studied is dealt within a specific development presented in this paper. We show the influence of the nature of the gas on the arc velocity and on possible re-strike using air and an air–PA6 mixture as the plasma gas.
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