Behavior of Low-Voltage Surge Protective Devices Under High-Current Derivative Impulses

Nonlinear Load and RLC Pulse Shaping Surge Generator Models in Simulation Environment

“…Lightning is one of the major sources of electrical overstresses that can cause failure, permanent degradation, or temporary malfunction of electrical & electronic devices and systems [1,2]. For example, insurance claims resulting from lightning damage in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming in USA during the period from 1987 to 1993 resulted in over $7 million a year in lightning losses [3].…”

“…For example, insurance claims resulting from lightning damage in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming in USA during the period from 1987 to 1993 resulted in over $7 million a year in lightning losses [3]. To reduce the vulnerability of electrical and electronic installations against this phenomenon, transient protection devices were developed and they are continuously subjected to further investigations and improvements [1,2,[4][5][6]. Identification of surge protective devices (SPD), behaviour of SPD under overstress situation and the characterization of overstress features are important to manufacturers and its applications in industrial, military, consumer and medical electronic equipment applications.…”

“…In the literature there are several studies have been disclosed response of SPD under different transient conditions such as fast current impulses, repetitive current impulse environment and high current derivative impulses [1,2,[4][5][6]. The majority of the experiments reported in the literature have been performed under 8/20 s (under-short circuit conditions or low-impedance loads) and 1.2/50 s (under-open circuit conditions or high-impedance loads) standard overstress test waveforms [8].…”

“…The design of a pulse shaping network for the combination waveforms 1.2/50 s voltage impulse & 8/20 s current impulse is described in [11]. Mainly, three different surge generator with RLC pulse shaping networks were used for testing of the characteristics of SPD as per the available literature namely Capacitor Bank generator, Combination waveform generator and commercially available Schaffner generator [1,2,[4][5][6][12][13][14][15].…”

“…In order for simulating transient response of a surge protection devices, there are two ways which can inject standard overstress test waveforms as the impulse source, couple to the SPD model circuit [8]. One option is to modelling the impulse generator as a circuit model as per the available literature [1,2,[4][5][6][12][13][14][15] Second option is to use two analytical equations as explained in [8,16] and recommended by international standards (IEC 60-2, ANSI/IEEE Std 4-1978, and ANSI C62. as the source for both 1.2/50 s voltage impulse & 8/20 s current impulse.…”