Design and Analysis of Double-Sided Thomson Coil Actuator for Extra Fast Opening Operation

Thomson Coil Actuator (TCA) has gained increased research interests in recent years due to the fast response as well as manageable losses. Therefore, this paper presents the design and analysis results of a single and double fixed coils TCA. The actuator is developed as a part of an extra fast medium voltage hybrid DC Circuit Breaker (CB) for DC modern grids. The design analysis for the single fixed coil TCA highlights the challenges that the actuator may experience with higher excitation voltage. Furthermore, a double-sided TCA version has been designed and compared to the single fixed coil one demonstrating the essential advantages that the double-sided version has. In addition, other design aspects such as mechanical and thermal analysis have been studied and presented in order to guarantee higher reliability of the actuator during its operation. Also, a comparison of the TCA vs. a conventional solenoid-based actuator will be presented.