Electr Eng (2009) 90:523–528
DOI 10.1007/s00202-008-0103-9
ORIGINAL PAPER
A simple evaluation method of the thermal interruption limit
of power circuit breakers
A. Karimi · K. Niayesh
Received: 26 November 2007 / Accepted: 16 August 2008 / Published online: 9 September 2008
© Springer-Verlag 2008
Abstract In this paper, a simplified test method has been
proposed and implemented for evaluating the thermal inter-
ruption capability of the power circuit breakers. In this
method, the influences of the arc voltage of the auxiliary
breaker on the evaluation of the thermal interruption limit of
the circuit breaker can be eliminated. To validate the propo-
sed test circuit, a series of experiments have been carried out
on a 24-kV SF6 gas circuit breaker with rated short circuit
of 25 kA and the successful interruption zone in terms of the
time derivative of the current before current zero (di/dt) and
rate of increase in recovery voltage (dv/dt) has been deter-
mined.
Keywords Circuit breakers · Interruption capability test ·
Synthetic test · Thermal reignitions
1 Introduction
Power circuit breakers play the most important role in pre-
serving the stability of power networks and in decreasing
the induced damages to power system utilities in the case of
any fault. Therefore, the determination of their interruption
capability limits seems to be necessary to be able to predict
whether different faults can be cleared. Most of failures occur
in gas circuit breakers originate from a soft thermal collapse
of the gas insulation within less than microsecond after cur-
rent zero; the so-called thermal reignition, due to the increase
in the conductivity of the rest plasma resulted from the flow
A. Karimi (B) · K. Niayesh
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
e-mail: a.karimy@ece.ut.ac.ir
K. Niayesh
e-mail: kniayesh@ut.ac.ir
of the post-arc current produced by application of the initial
transient recovery voltage to the breaker.
The density of the rest plasma is dependent on the cur-
rent fall rate before current zero, and the post-arc current
responsible for heating up the plasma is controlled by the
conductivity of the rest plasma and the applied voltage. So,
it can be concluded that the thermal reignition is strongly
dependent on the rate of decrease in the current before cur-
rent zero as well as on the rate of increase in the recovery
voltage [1,2].
As the result to evaluate the limits of the interruption capa-
bility of the circuit breakers, different currents and voltage
have to be applied to the circuit breaker. Some efforts have
been accomplished to perform some test related to thermal
reignition using a full synthetic test method [3,4]. In some
other studies, a characteristic of the interruption capability
in terms of the time derivative of the current and rate of
increase in the applied voltage has been established [5,6].
The presence of an auxiliary breaker (AB) in a synthetic
circuit is unavoidable. As the AB opens during the current
flow through the test breaker, the voltage of the high current
source is divided between AB and test breaker resulting in
a reduction of the arc energy in test breaker as addressed in
[7]. Also the distortion of the current waveshape near cur-
rent zero makes the evaluation of the limits of the thermal
interruption capability of the circuit breakers erroneous.
In this paper, to eliminate the undesired effects of the arc
voltage in synthetic test circuits, a test circuit is proposed
to evaluate the thermal limitation of the circuit breakers in
a more accurate way. The main objective of this method is
based on the application of a recovery voltage with the redu-
ced amplitude but with the same rate of increase within the
first microseconds after current zero to the circuit breaker.
The proposed method is implemented to test a 24, 25 kA
SF6 circuit breaker. It must be noted that with appropriate
123
524
Fig. 1 A full synthetic test
circuit
Fig. 2 The proposed test circuit
selection of the circuit components like the impedance
parallel to the test breaker, the proposed method can be sim-
ply extended to testing of high-voltage circuit breakers.
2 Main principle and structure of the proposed method
The main philosophy of this method is based on the fact
that the initiation of a thermal reignition depends on the rate
of increase in initial TRV (IRRRV) not much to the peak
of TRV wave shape in tens of microseconds later following
interruption and the IRRRV has a dominant factor for failure
occurrence specially in SF6 gas circuit breakers. So, to eva-
luate the thermal interruption limit of the circuit breaker, it is
sufficient to apply voltages with the same slopes but reduced
peak values. For this purpose, it is proposed to use a cur-
rent source combined with impedance parallel to the breaker
under test (Fig. 2) instead of the full synthetic test circuit
(Fig. 1).
As illustrated in Figs. 1 and 2, the only difference bet-
ween the proposed method and a complete synthetic circuit
is in voltage injection part and an AB as unavoidable part in
synthetic test circuit highlighted in Fig. 1.
In this method, as shown in Fig. 2, using only a current
source circuit without using of voltage injection part finally
123
Electr Eng (2009) 90:523–528
leads to eliminate the AB as an unavoidable component in a
synthetic test circuit. The TRV waveshape produced in a full
synthetic and proposed method is shown in Fig. 3 for iden-
tical situations in terms of short circuit current and parallel
impedance that is representative of the main concept of the
proposed method. In Fig. 3, it can be seen that the slope of
initial part of TRV (ITRV) in both test methods are the same.
It must be noted that in the proposed method because of
eliminating the AB, there is no distortion in current wave-
shape near current zero in comparison with a distorted one
produced in a synthetic test circuit as shown in Fig. 4.
As the circuit breaker is sensitive to the rate of decrease
in the current just before current zero, distorted current wave
shape near the current zero causes some error in evaluating
its real thermal interruption capability. On the other hand,
because of the dependence of the rate of decrease in the cur-
rent and the waveshape of the applied TRV in synthetic test
methods, care has to be taken to adjust the parameters in a
right way to be able to prevent any overstress applied on the
circuit breaker.
2.1 Producing and controlling the ITRV wave forms
Since the voltage injection circuit has been omitted in the
proposed method, the TRV is produced innately by the same
current source, eventually yields a TRV waveshape with the
same IRRRV produced in a synthetic circuit only with the
lower peak as shown in Fig. 3. As the switching devices
especially gas-type circuit breakers are sensitive to the ITRV
waveshape within the thermal zone, producing an ITRV like
a triangular waveshape as the same type in SLF tests is very
important. An example of measured ITRV in established test
circuit and its derivative after noise removal is depicted in
Fig. 5. According to Fig. 5, it can be seen that undesirable
time delay of the TRVs with 1-cos form has been substantially
reduced. The wave shape of derivative within a time interval
of some microseconds after current zero is almost constant
Electr Eng (2009) 90:523–528 525

Fig. 3 The ITRV waveshape

produced in both of proposed
and synthetic methods

Fig. 4 The waveshape of the

current produced in both of the
proposed and synthetic methods

Fig. 5 A sample TRV

measured in the proposed test
circuit

123
526
Fig. 6 A real TRV wave shape in comparison with an ideal (1-cos)
type
as marked with a dashed border in Fig. 5b. In this case, the
measured variation of the slope of TRV has been resulted at
most 2% within a time interval of 2 µs with a delay time of
less than 0.2 µs. So, the produced ITRV has a linear form with
good approximation at least within the thermal zone while
just a 10
resistance has been used in parallel branch. For
higher amounts of resistance, the variations of TRV slop and
delay time have been even decreased to about, respectively,
1% and 0.1 µs. This fact is more evident in Fig. 6 in which
the TRV wave shape shown in Fig. 5 in a real situation has
been compared with a simple (1-cos) waveshape in an ideal
situation in the shape of a two-parameter envelop considered
by the IEC for the TRVs below than 75 kV.
2.2 Controlling the initial rate of increase in the recovery
voltage
To be able to apply different stresses on circuit breaker, it is
necessary to change the initial rate of the recovery voltage
(IRRRV). For this purpose, a series RC branch in parallel to
the breaker under test has been inserted. Indeed, the main
reason of choosing the series RC branch is to reach the delay
times of about 0.2 µs and less. As the changes in capacitance
of the series RC do not have any tangible influence on IRRRV,
a constant capacitance can be used and the IRRRV variations
have been controlled solely by changing the amount of resis-
tance in different currents. It must be noted that replacing the
RC branch by a resistor would result in the same IRRRVs, but
to avoid a galvanic connection between the contacts of the
breaker under test and to be able to implement the test circuit
using resistances with lower power ratings, the RC branch
is preferable. Since the IRRRV depends on the interrupted
short-circuit current also the distance to the first discontinuity
along the busbar, the IRRRV can be changed with changing
either the resistance or the short circuit current (or charging
voltage of capacitors).
Analyzing the circuit shown in Fig. 2, the IRRRV can
be calculated for different short circuit currents and resis-
tances. The charging voltage of the capacitors and the parallel
123
Electr Eng (2009) 90:523–528
Fig. 7 The ITRV along with its first and second derivative waveshapes
impedance of the test circuit breaker are the most important
parameters, used to adjust the IRRRV. The influence of the
arc energy input on the applied TRV waveshape has been
considered by assuming a relatively constant arcing voltage
(in this case of about 300–400 V). The simulation results have
been brought in Table 1.
The rate of change of the applied recovery voltage is also
time dependent. As shown in Fig. 7, the values used here are
those related to the time, where the second time derivative
of the recovery voltage is zero. These values are the same as
those calculated by the application of the proposed method
in the IEC standards [2], where the IRRRV is calculated as
the slope of the line drawn between 20 and 80% points of the
ITRV peak.
3 Experimental results and validation
In this section, the results of the experiments performed using
conventional synthetic circuit and the proposed method to
obtain the thermal interruption limit of a 24 kV/25 kA SF6
circuit breaker are reported. For this purpose, the resistances
corresponding to the critical IRRRVs have been obtained for
each current via carrying out a number of tests in each step
based on trial and error.
Before the calculating the IRRRVs, the recorded signals
has been denoised with wavelet in an offline manner without
using embedded low-pass filter. Denoising of the signal has
been performed by means of third-order Daubechies wavelet
[8]. It must be noted that application of several other types
of wavelet such as Symlets, Coiflets and Meyer yields the
identical results [9].
Figure 8 shows the denoised voltage signal using wavelet
in comparison with the original measured voltage waveshape
and the signal filtered using the embedded low-pass filter of
the oscilloscope with the cut-off frequency of 20 MHz. As it
can be seen, in the case of application of a low-pass filter, an
undesired time shift in original signal appears, but applying
the wavelet method, this undesired effect can be avoided and
Electr Eng (2009) 90:523–528 527

Table 1 Calculated IRRRV values versus both of resistances and short circuit current
Current (kA) Resistance (
)
10 20 50 100 300 600 1,000 2,000

25 95 156 300 450 1,500 2,040 2,370 2,700

27 102 170 325 485 1,630 2,200 2,560 2,915
29 110 180 350 515 1,750 2,370 2,750 3,130
31 117 195 375 560 1,880 2,540 2,950 3,350
33 125 207 400 600 2,000 2,700 3,150 3,570

Fig. 8 Denoised voltage signal with wavelet and embedded low-pass

filter of the oscilloscope Fig. 10 Critical resistance values for different currents measured in
the conventional synthetic circuit and using the proposed method

current zero. The change of the statistical characteristics of

Fig. 9 The residual noise and its Statistical distribution
therefore a much more accurate parameter estimation for the
models of the circuit breaker based on the measured voltage
and current signals can be made.
During the denoising by means of the wavelet method, the
residual noise has been obtained as shown in Fig. 9.
Statistical distribution of the noises is representative for
a white Gaussian noise superimposed on original signal, but
the white noise follows two different patterns before and after
the white noise around the current zero might be a conse-
quence of the topology changes, occur at the current zero,
which could have an impact on the equivalent impedance of
the noise sources.
During all of the tests, the success in the interruption of
the current at its first current zero has been considered as the
sign of non-failure occurrence. Figure 10 shows the expe-
rimentally evaluated critical resistance with considering a
10% error margin for the thermal interruption of the circuit
breaker under test in the proposed method. The mean criti-
cal resistances have also been evaluated using the synthetic
method compared with the ones that have been obtained in
the proposed method as shown in Fig. 11. For parallel resis-
tances higher than the critical one, the initial rate of increase
in the recovery voltage is higher than the critical IRRRV, so
the breaker fails to interrupt the current. As it can be seen
that the critical parallel resistance in the case of the proposed
method is some 10% lower than the value evaluated using
the conventional synthetic method as the applied stress on
test breaker is lower than whatever it experience in reality.
The test results verify this fact as the failures occur with the
lower amounts of resistance, e.g. IRRRV in proposed than to
the case in which the synthetic one has been used.
For all the tests, it has been used a 330-nF capacitance in
series RC branch. Although the critical parallel resistances

123
528 Electr Eng (2009) 90:523–528

Fig. 11 Critical resistance values for different parallel capacitances

measured using the proposed method
Fig. 13 Calculated critical rate of increase in the recovery voltage for
different short circuit currents using two different methods

4 Conclusion

In this paper, a method is proposed to evaluate the thermal

interruption limit of the power circuit breakers. This is a new
and simple testing method that showed thermal interrupting
limits comparable with a synthetic test method. Because of
the limitation on the charging voltage of the present test setup,
this method is limited to 25 kA/50 Hz. The proposed method
has been implemented to evaluate the thermal interruption
limit of a 24 kV/25 kA SF6 circuit breaker. With appropriate
selection of the components of the proposed test circuit, it
is possible to apply this method to test high voltage circuit
breakers.
Fig. 12 Critical rate of increase in the recovery voltage for different
short circuit currents using different measurement methods
References

1. Nakanishi K (1991) Switching phenomena in high-voltage circuit

using the proposed method with both 330 and 10 nF capaci-
tors have been obtained as shown in Fig. 12. According to
Fig. 12, it is clear that the capacitance of the parallel capa-
citor has almost no influence on the critical resistance value
of the parallel resistor. Therefore, as mentioned in the pre-
vious section, to adjust the appropriate value of the IRRRV,
it is sufficient to use a constant capacitor and to change the
resistance value of the parallel resistor.
The critical rate of increase in the recovery voltage for dif-
ferent short circuit currents calculated using the experimen-
tally determined critical resistance values has been shown in
Fig. 13. Again as described in the previous section, because of
the unavoidable influence of the presence of the auxiliary cir-
cuit breaker on the determination of the real thermal limit of
the circuit breaker, the limit evaluated using the conventional
synthetic test circuit is somewhat higher than that obtained
in the proposed circuit.
breakers interruption phenomena. Marcel Dekker, New York
2. IEC62271-100, 2001–5
3. Blez B, Guilloux C (1989) Post-arc current in high voltage SF6
breakers when at up to 63 kA. IEEE Trans Power deliv 4(2):
1056–1062
4. ST-Jean G, Landry M, Leclerc M, Chénier A (1988) A new concept
in post-arc analysis applied to power circuit breaker. IEEE Trans
Power deliv 3(3):1834–1845
5. Swanson BW, Roidt RM, Browne TE (1972) A thermal arc model
for short line fault interruption. ETZ-A Bd. 93(H.7):375–380
6. Nishikawa H, Kobayashi A, Okazaki T, Yamashita S (1976) Arc
extinction performance of SF6 gas blast interrupter. IEEE Trans
Power Apparatus Syst PAS-95(6):1834–1845
7. van der Sluis L, Sheng BL (1995) The influence of the arc voltage
in synthetic test circuits. IEEE Trans Power Deliv 10(1):274–279
8. Angrisan L, Dias C (1997) Advanced processing techniques of
high voltage impulse test signals. In: Proceedings of the IEEE
instrumentation and measurement technology conference, Ottawa,
Canada, May 19–21, pp 1136–1141
9. Satish L, Gururaj BI (2001) Wavelet analysis for estimation of
mean-curve of impulse waveforms superimposed by noise, oscil-
lations and overshoot. IEEE Trans Power Deliv 16(1):116–121

123