Collision effects on sheath development after interrupting a vacuum arc

Abstract

Sheath development dominates the initial stage of dielectric recovery process after interrupting a vacuum arc. The objective of this paper is to simulate sheath development after interrupting a vacuum arc considering collision between ions and background neutral metal vapor. We adopted Particle in Cell-Monte Carlo Collisions (PIC-MCC) method and a one-dimensional sheath model was developed. We assumed a Maxwellian velocity distribution for the neutral metal vapor, ions and electrons at temperature 0.2eV, 2eV and 3.5eV at the start of recovery, respectively. The results show that a higher density of background neutral metal vapor tends to increase the completion time of sheath development. Moreover, the completion time of sheath development becomes faster as the rising rate of a TRV increases, and the completion time of sheath development becomes slower as initial ion density increases.