Metamorphic Manipulating Mechanism Design for MCCB Using Index Reduced Iteration

The present research on moulded case circuit breaker（MCCB） focuses on the enhancement of current-limiting interrupting performance during short circuit, overload, under voltage and phase failure, involving electrics, magnetic, mechanics, thermal, material, friction, arc extinguishing, impact vibration, skin effect, etc. The rigid-flexible coupling of the parts and components of the metamorphic manipulating mechanism in multi-fields leads to the non-rigid, high frequency, high damping, singularity of the Euler-Lagrange equations which represents the multi-body dynamics. The small step iteration which is used for obtaining the instantaneous and short time critical interrupting performance of metamorphic mechanism appears inaccuracy. It is difficult to realize top-down design by existing CAD systems. Therefore, a metamorphic manipulating mechanism design method for MCCB using index reduced iteration（IRI） is put forward. The metamorphic manipulating mechanism of MCCB is decomposed into three mechanisms： main switch connector mechanism, electromagnet-drawbar-jump buckle mechanism, and bimetallic strip-drawbar mechanism, which is respectively described by electro-dynamic force, electromagnet force, and bimetallic strip force. The dummy part（virtual rigid） without moment of inertia and mass is employed as intermediate to join the flexible body and rigid body. The model of rigid-flexible coupling metamorphic mechanism multi-body dynamics is built. The differential algebraic equations（DAEs） of the multibody dynamics model are converted to pure ordinary differential equations（ODEs） by coordinate partition. Order reduced integration with multi-step and variable step-size is preceded based on IRI. The non-linear algebraic equations are solved in each integration step by Newton-Rapson iteration. There is no ill-condition and singularity of Jacobian matrix when step size reduces to zero. The independent prototype design system using ACIS R13, HOOPS V11.0 and Visual C＋＋.NET 2003 has been developed, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method. The proposed method enhances the current-limiting interrupting performance of MCCB, and has reference significance for multi-body dynamics design for similar flexible metamorphic mechanisms in multi-fields.