Image courtesy of Jean-Louis Gelet and Antoine Gerlaud, Mersen France. Leaving trial-and-error methods behind, they can now understand what goes on inside the fuse, adjust the cross section and fuse element thickness to reach the desired thermal response, and produce fuses that are smaller in size and less prone to arcing. Hence, they have now turned to simulation for the design stage. According to the two researchers at Mersen, quenching the arc is the most difficult part of optimizing their fuse designs. It is vital to quench this arc as it can put people, equipment, and the environment at risk. Upon melting, the fuse will sometimes continue to conduct because the newly-created gap is bridged by an electric arc. They go on to mention that regardless of size, fuses operate on the same basic principle a metal strip is heated up, and if there is an excessive flow of current, the fuse vaporizes. A few examples of where fuses are involved include wind turbines and photovoltaic systems on the higher end and semiconductor devices on the lower end, as mentioned by Jean-Louis Gelet and Antoine Gerlaud of Mersen France in the user story “ Control of Joule Heating Extends Performance and Device Life“. When it comes to protecting electronics components and thereby the entire system or equipment, fuses and busbars are essential. Modeling Joule Heating for Optimized Busbar and Fuse Designs The electric protection group at manufacturing company Mersen France used to base their busbar and fuse designs on trial-and-error, but these days they turn to COMSOL Multiphysics. Controlling Joule heating is very important when designing and manufacturing electrical systems components.

It involves solving for electrical voltage and temperature fields simultaneously with highly temperature-dependent material properties. Joule heating is a fairly standard type of simulation for COMSOL users nowadays.

Joule heating in comsol 5.3