要約

This paper describes quantitative numerical investigations of turbulence and arc interaction carried out in our laboratories in the frame of industrial applications such as electric arc furnaces and high voltage circuit breakers. The capabilities of k-epsilon models to account for the laminarization process due to large variations of the viscosity is studied in two dimensional axisymetrical stationary simulations of arc flow. A first attempt at modelling the effects of turbulent fluctuations on electrical source terms is also presented. A second order closure model has been used in order to improve the turbulent flux predictions by taking into account the large anisotropy of the turbulent motion. The second part of this paper is devoted to transient and three dimensional electric arcs modelling using direct simulation methodology. Instationary movements of arc due to the self-induced magnetic forces and the influence of fluid flow have been calculated in simple geometry (arcs between plate electrodes). Computations of statistical properties have been performed in order to study the effect of turbulent fluctuations on electric arcs.