Response characteristics of diode gas discharge tubes

As a method for protecting electronic equipments from lightning attacks, mounting of SPD (surge protective device) which consists of a gas discharge tube (GDT), metal oxide varistor (MOV), and others is useful. In protecting equipment by SPD, overvoltage protection and energy harmonization become important. Above all, when overvoltage protection is thought of, response characteristics become important. Response characteristics depend on wavefront length and peak value applied to the equipment. In this paper, using 5 types of GDT, experiments were conducted on response characteristics when voltage waveforms having varying wavefront lengths were applied to investigate the response characteristics. Specially, the response characteristics for steep wavefront are specified.