Investigation of Experimental Imitative Testing of Vacuum Circuit Breaker

Abstract

The main objective of the study is the experimental determination of switching characteristics of the vacuum interrupter phases, which is a crucial part of the high voltage vacuum circuit breaker. Experimental imitative testing is a better method of testing high voltage vacuum circuit breakers. New imitative testing scheme (Vale-Dobker) is designed to test each phase of the vacuum circuit breakers (VCB) in different ranges of high voltage to achieve maximum performance. Experimental study reveals that the Vale-Dobker scheme is better than others. A new imitative method for testing the vacuum circuit breaker has been presented. To determine its switching characteristics, the imitative test circuit by Vale-Dobker was applied, forming on the test object a fault current ranging from 1 to 10 kA and a transient recovery voltage across the contacts of the vacuum chamber up to 20 kV. The results confirm that the imitative controlled switching testing can suppress the current and overvoltage, thus fundamentally improving the efficiency and system safety.