Failure modes of synthetic test circuits used to evaluate the current interruption capability of high-voltage circuit breakers

This paper deals with different failure mechanisms in a synthetic test circuit, which may lead to faulty interpretation of the results achieved using such a synthetic test circuit to evaluate the current interruption capability of high-voltage circuit breakers. These include transient insulation failure in different components of synthetic test circuits supposed to high voltage as well as imperfect operation of various switches. Different failure modes are simulated and it has been shown that the simulation results match the waveforms measured in faulty operational circuits. The results of this paper make it possible to distinguish different failure modes of such circuits based on the measured current and voltage waveforms. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.