B.LOVESWARA RAO* et al.

[IJESAT] INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCE & ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

ISSN: 22503676
Volume - 2, Special Issue - 1, 28 32

A NOVEL METHOD TO TEST THE STRENGTH OF ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT THROUGH IMPULSE GENERATOR AND DESIGN OF ITS CIRCUIT COMPONENTS
B.Loveswara Rao1, A.Srilalitha2, D.Manasa 3
Asst. Professor, EEE, K L University, Andhra Pradesh, India, loveshrao@gmail.com Student, EEE, K L University, Andhra Pradesh, India, srilalithadiraju@gmail.com 3 Student, EEE, K L University, Andhra Pradesh, India, damerlamanasa.90@gmail.com
2 1

Abstract
Studies of transient disturbances on a transmission system have shown that lightning and switching operations are followed by a travelling wave of a steep wave front. This type of impulse may result in the breakdown of the insulation system in power equipments. Generation of impulse voltages in a test laboratory becomes therefore, one of the standard techniques for testing the breakdown strength of electrical insulation. The impulse generator is an apparatus which produces very short high voltage or current surges. High impulse voltages are used to test the strength of electric power equipment like insulators, arresters, alternators, instrumentation transformers, high voltage cables, power transformers, condenser bushings etc. Impulse-voltage testing is now usually carried out with a multi-stage generator. This paper describes the evolution of this type of generator and presents an analysis of the circuits employed. The paper is intended to collate and supplement the information contained in a large number of technical publications.

Index Terms: Impulse generator, wave front, wave tail, double exponential wave form, Marx model, simulink --------------------------------------------------------------------- *** -----------------------------------------------------------------------1. INTRODUCTION
There is an increasing demand for impulse-voltage tests on electrical apparatus, particularly when the latter is directly employed in the transmission of power. These tests are usually designed to simulate the conditions which may arise on transmission lines or associated equipment owing to the presence of surge voltages. In order that equipment designed to be used on high voltage lines, and others be able to withstand surges caused in them during operation, it is necessary to test these equipment with the voltages of the form likely to be met in service. The apparatus which produces the required voltages is the impulse generator. In high voltage engineering, an impulse voltage is normally a unidirectional voltage which rises quickly without appreciable oscillations, to a peak value and then falls less rapidly to zero. In high voltage engineering, assembling the actual circuit might be very bulky, time consuming and costly, while for the design, calculation technique could be complicated and may involve a lot of simplifications. The analysis, design and practical implementation of impulse voltage generator without computer simulation is extremely laborious, time consuming and expensive. In this paper, analysis and design is carried out using MATLAB package with its simulink tool box.

2. TYPES OF IMPULSE RATING FOR THE SURGE

There are two types of impulse rating for the lightning surges which are used to simulate what may happen in real life surges. They are impulse voltage surge and impulse current surge. The impulse is applied to a test object to verify its capability of withstanding surges of high voltage and high current. The most common used is 8/20 s for impulse current surge and 1.2/50 s for impulse voltage surge. Actually, lightning-induced surge currents are characterized as having very rapid rising front edges and long decaying tails. It could simply mean or write as (tf/tt) s.

Figure 1: Voltage impulse

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B.LOVESWARA RAO* et al. [IJESAT] INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCE & ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

ISSN: 22503676
Volume - 2, Special Issue - 1, 28 32

An impulse generator essentially consists of a capacitor which is charged to the required voltage and discharged through a circuit. The circuit parameters can be adjusted to give an impulse voltage of the desired shape. Basic circuit of a single stage impulse generator is shown in Figure 4, where the capacitor Cs is charged from a dc source until the spark gap G breaks down. The voltage is then impressed upon the object under test of capacitance Cb. The wave shaping resistors Rd and Re control the front and tail of the impulse voltage available across Cb respectively. Overall, the wave shape is determined by the values of the generator capacitance (Cs) and the load capacitance (Cd), and the wave control resistances Rd and Re. Equation for the output voltage is given by Figure 2: Current impulse

3. IMPULSE WAVEFORM

Where v(t) - instantaneous output voltage; Vo- DC charging voltage for the capacitor; , - roots of the characteristics equation, which depend on the parameters of the generator. This circuit can be analysed using the Laplace transforms. Let i be the current through C1 and the currents through R1 be i1 and that of R2 and C2 be i2.

Figure 5: Circuit for analysis Figure 3: Impulse waveform Now, The wave front time is given as (t3-t1)/(0.9-0.1) or 1.25(t3-t1) for the 10% to 90% measurement and as (t3-t2)/(0.9-0.3) or 1.67(t3-t2) for the 30% to 90% measurement. The wave tail time is defined as the time from the initial point of the waveform to falling to 50% of peak.

4. SINGLE STAGE IMPULSE GENERATOR

But where

If and are the roots of the equation,

1= 0

Figure 4: Single stage impulse generator

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B.LOVESWARA RAO* et al. [IJESAT] INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCE & ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY Then the laplace transform expression can be simplified as follows,

ISSN: 22503676
Volume - 2, Special Issue - 1, 28 32

This gives,

For 1.2/50 s IEC waveform 0.0143 and 4.87

4.1 Calculation of and

The properties that, in practical impulse waveforms the wave front time is usually very much smaller than the wave tail time (tf << tt and << ) is made use of in making approximations to the solution. Consider the circuit shown in Figure 5 Also, to obtain a small wave front time and a long wave tail time, the series resistance R2 must be small and the shunt resistance R1 must be comparatively much larger. Thus to analyze the wave front, it is permissible to open circuit the resistor R1 and redraw the approximate circuit as shown in Figure 6. During the wave front, the charging rate was seen from Figure 6 to be dependant mainly on the inverse time constant . This should correspond to the inverse of the time constant of the approximate circuit.

Figure 7: Circuit to analyze wave tail

During the wave tail, the discharging rate was seen from Figure 7, to be dependant mainly on the inverse time constant . This should thus correspond to the inverse of the time constant of the approximate circuit. Thus, where

4.2 Wave front and wave tail control

The wave front time tf and the wave tail time tt may be evaluated as follows: Defining the wave front from 10% to 90% and considering only that determines wave front, tf = (t3 - t1)/(0.9-0.1) = 1.25(t3 - t1) &

Figure 6: Circuit to analyze wave front

Where Similarly, since both capacitors discharge through the resistor R1, and since R1 >> R2, to analyze the wave tail, it is permissible to short circuit the resistor R2 and redraw the approximate circuit as shown in Figure 7. Similarly, defining the wave tail time as the time to decay to 50% of peak, and considering only that determines the wave tail,

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B.LOVESWARA RAO* et al. [IJESAT] INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCE & ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY

ISSN: 22503676
Volume - 2, Special Issue - 1, 28 32

Ra. Finally, all Cd and Cy will discharge again via the resistors.

5. MULTI

STAGE

IMPULSE

GENERATOR

(MARX MODEL)
For a multistage generator, the multiplier circuit can be obtained by cascading single stage impulse generators. To obtain large impulse voltages, a multi stage impulse generator is used. A group of capacitors are charged in parallel and discharged in series. The switch over of capacitors from a parallel connection to a series connection occurs automatically when the intermediate spark gap breaks down after the capacitors are charged to the required potential Vo. The voltage at the generator terminal is v(t) and is equal to nVo where n is the number of stages. Figure 10: Multi stage impulse generator

The n stage circuit can be reduced to a single stage equivalent circuit as below: Ra = n Ra Rd = n Rd Cd = n Cd Uo = n Uo

6. CIRCUIT COMPONENTS
Figure 8: Charged in parallel In our matlab simulated circuit, for single stage impulse generator, tf = 1.2 s and tt = 50 s C1 is charged to 100V C1 = 0.5 F and C1/C2 = 40 C2 = 0.0125 F, R2 = 33 , R1 = 140

Figure 9: Discharged in series

5.1 Analysis of multistage impulse generator

From Figure 10, the impulse capacitors of stages Cd are charged to the stage charging voltage Uo via the high charging resistors R. When all the switching gaps F breakdown, Cd will be connected in series, so that Cy is charged via the series connection of all the damping resistors

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B.LOVESWARA RAO* et al. [IJESAT] INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING SCIENCE & ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY For 3 stage impulse generator, Cd = 100 nF Ra = 80 Rd = 1K R = 1M Cy = 1 nF Impulse generator is supplied with 200V dc voltage source.

ISSN: 22503676
Volume - 2, Special Issue - 1, 28 32

1. High voltage engineering by Kuffel Abdulla 2. Naidu, M.S. and Kamaraju, V., High Voltage Engineering 2nd. ed. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 1995, pp 137-140. 3. Impulse voltage generators design by W.S.TEST SYSTEMS PRIVATE LIMITED BANGLORE 4. World Journal of Modelling and Simulation,Vol. 4 (2008) No. 1, pp. 57-63 5. Simulink, 1.3 release notes. The Math Works Inc, 1994. 6. Matlab reference guide. The Math Works Inc., 7. Design of impulse generator By Haefely Test AG ,Lehenmattstrasse 353,CH - 4052 Basel,Switzerland 8. M. J. Bishop, M. F. Simon: The impulse generators in Les Renardieres. IEEE Trans. on Pow. App. and Syst. Vol. 91 (1972) 6pp. 2366-2376. 9. Impulse voltage generator modelling using MATLAB M. Jayaraju, I. Daut, M. Adzman School of Electrical System Engineering, UniMAP, 02600 Jejawi, Perlis, Malaysia (Received October 6 2007, Accepted December 22 2007)

7. CONCLUSION
Tail resistor should be adjusted in order to get similar waveform as standard waveform of impulse generator. From try and error, if the value of the tail resistor is high, then the tail of the output waveform will also increased. In other words, the tail of the output waveform is directly proportional to the value of the tail resistor. Changing the value for front resistor will affect the peak voltage. If the value of the front resistor is increased, the front voltage will decrease. In other words, the tail of the peak voltage is inversely proportional to the value of the front resistor. The shape of output waveform is also affected by load capacitor. Peak voltage of the output waveform will increase if the value of the load capacitor is decreased, and vice versa. As a conclusion, Marx generator is one of the best methods to design an impulse generator. The unique idea from Marx generator is charging capacitor in parallel then discharging it in series would get the desired output waveform which fulfill the standard waveform of 1.2/50 s. From the resulted output waveform, the characteristics of the circuit could be identified and also could be a reference for further study.

BIOGRAPHIES
B.Loveswara Rao was born in Sankhavaram, AP, India. He received the B.Tech. Degree (First class with distinction honors), the M.Tech. Degree (First class with distinction honors) from KL college of engineering, Affiliated to Acharya Nagarjuna University, Andhra Pradesh, India, all in Electrical Engineering, in 2005, 2008, respectively. He is currently working as an assistant professor in KL Universitys since 2005. His research interests include FACTS, electric drives and power systems. A.Srilalitha was born in Vijayawada, AP, India. She is pursuing B.Tech final year EEE in KL University. Her interests include Non-conventional energy resources. D.Manasa was was born in Vijayawada, AP, India. She is pursuing B.Tech final year EEE in KL University. Her interests include Nonconventional energy resources.

REFERENCES

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