High voltage direct current (HVDC) circuit breaker with rapid fault clearing is an important equipment for protecting DC transmission system. The mechanical vacuum circuit breaker based on artificial current zero (ACZ) is excellent to interrupt the large current.
A prototype of mechanical HVDC circuit breaker is simulated in MATLAB in this paper. The HVDC circuit breaker is composed of the main circuit breaker and the commutation switch. Both of them are operated by electromagnetic repulsion actuators. The commutation process of the circuit breaker is analyzed in detail. Furthermore, a mechanical HVDC circuit breaker module based on artificial current zero has been tested to interrupt the large current, which is provided by a LC circuit. The corresponding waveform of the circuit breaker is obtained.