644 / 2017-05-16 13:36:25

Determination of Parameters of High-voltage and High Frequency Impulse Conditioning of a Vacuum Interrupter

high-voltage and high frequency impulse conditioning,impulse voltage,capacitive current,vacuum interrupter

High-voltage and high frequency (HVHF) impulse conditioning technology is an efficiency method to promote the performance of a vacuum interrupter. The breakdown sparks tend to uniformly distribute in contact surface, even in a case of marginal non-parallel facing contact surface. Our previous study shows the distribution of breakdown sparks in contact surfaces follows the Gaussian distribution. However, the parameters of HVHF impulse conditioning, which includes the impulse voltage, impulse frequency, and contact gap, have not been determined practically. The objective of this paper is to determine the parameters of the HVHF impulse conditioning of the vacuum interrupter (VI), based on the capacitive current switching performance. Nine 40.5 kV conditioned commercial VIs are subjected to 30 operations of capacitive current switching test in our experiment. The inrush current in the test is 20 kA, with the frequency of 4 kHz. The capacitive test current is 400 A. Before the test, each VI is subjected to one kind of HVHF impulse conditioning procedure. The conditioning procedures are arranged as an orthogonal test of 3 factors, with each parameter is set to three levels.