A vacuum Interrupter (VI), a core part that composes the breaking part of medium-voltage vacuum circuit breaker (VCB), has the excellent insulation performance and arc-extinguishing capability. SF6 gas had been used for the external insulation of VIs since the dielectric strength of SF6 gas is superior to that of other insulation gases. However, because of environmental problems related with global warming, a solid-insulated technology was recently researched. The functionally graded material (FGM), as changing spatially the distribution of the relative permittivity inside an insulator, can reduce the electric field stress at the specific region. Especially, the external insulation performance of the VI with the molded FGM insulator is greatly improved as compared with that of the existing VI or the VI with a new external shield. In this paper, the effectiveness of this FGM insulator is verified by the numerical simulation.

A functionally graded material (FGM) spacer, which the distribution of dielectric permittivity inside an insulator changes spatially, can considerably reduce the electric field concentration around a high-voltage electrode and along the gas-insulator interface when compared to a conventional spacer with a uniform permittivity distribution, In this research, we propose the FGM spacer with an elliptical permittivity distribution instead of that with a distribution of dielectric permittivity varying along a radial direction only in order to improve efficiently the insulation capability. The optimal design of the elliptical FGM spacer configuration is performed by using the response surface methodology (RSM) combined with the steepest descent method (SDM).