Electrical installation & energy efficiency

Hi, I just had a couple of questions. First off, my dryer has been tripping it's breaker. Seems like it started right after the first snow of this winter, the power was cut on and off alot in one day, they were working on it down the road. I had everything else unplugged, except for my dryer. The breaker that the dryer is connected too, is a quad/4pole, i think. BRD type, 120/240. Theres 4, all connected by a metal piece thats on the outside and a small metal piece that connects two 40's in the middle, theres two 30's on either side of the 40's, the 30's are my dryer. Im not to sure what the "40's" are. The dryer will trip and only one of the "30" breakers will flip, the bottom one. It will shut off the dryer completly, but then i can turn the dryer back on, it will spin, but with no heat. I have also flipped the breaker back and it will start and run agian for a while, up to around 40 mins then the breaker will flip again, and no heat. Im trying to figure out why this is. I was told that i may need a new breaker and that it should'nt be in a quad, it should have one of its own. Im trying to get some opinions on what is the problem. Wether it's the dryer itself, wiring gone bad, one of the circuts are getting overloaded, or overheated. Could it be whatever the 40's are that is tripping the breaker. I dont know much about these things, i was going to get another breaker put in, but want to make sure that the problem is not bigger than just the breaker and end up creating more of a problem. Thank you. Sarah.