12/1/2019 Effects of the Earth Current Frequency and Distortion on Residual Current Devices

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Scientific Journal of Control Engineering

December 2013, Volume 3, Issue 6, PP.417-422

Effects of the Earth Current Frequency and

Distortion on Residual Current Devices
Weineng Wang † , Zhiqiang Wang, Xiao Peng
Hunan Electric Power Corporation Research Institute, Changsha 410007, China
† Email: wangwn@126.com

Abstract

Residual current devices characterized by simplicity and cost effectiveness holds a wide range of applications in the protection

against electric shock that is one of the important detriments to the safety of human and the performances of electrical apparatus.

This article puts the focus on the description of the basic structure and principles of residual current devices, particularly the effect

of the earth current frequency and distortion on the mal- and miss operation of electrical apparatus is investigated, which is of

reference value for the proper selection of electric apparatus.

Keywords: Residual Current Devices; Electric Shock Protection; Earth Current; Miss Operation; Mal Operation

Effects of Ground Current Frequency and Distortion on Leakage Protectors

Wang Weineng, Wang Zhiqiang, Peng Xiao

Scientific Research Institute of Hunan Electric Power Corporation, Changsha 410007, Hunan, China

Abstract: Electric shock is one of the important factors that endanger the safety of people and electrical equipment. The earth leakage protector is simple and economical, and has been widely used in electric shock protection.

Pan application. This article introduces the basic structure and principle of the earth leakage protector, and focuses on the ground fault frequency and distortion in the electric shock protection.

The effect of refusal to move has drawn a conclusion that has certain guiding significance for the correct selection of leakage protectors.

Keywords: earth leakage protector; electric shock protection; ground current;

Foreword
Electric shock is caused by lightning strikes on household electrical wires, or broken wires in accidents caused by electrical shock, etc.
Prepare for damage and personal safety accidents.
Electric shock protection is an important means of protecting against electric shock. At present, there are several ways [1] : automatic power disconnection; second-class equipment; insulation eq
Electrical isolation; local equipotential bonding without grounding. Because of its simple and easy characteristics, automatic power off has become the most commonly used method in electric shock

Leakage protectors using automatic power-off methods have also become more and more widely used [2, 3, 4] .
Since the leakage protector is triggered by a signal, a signal will also be generated under other electromagnetic interference to trigger the leakage protector, which will cause a mistake.
When the power switch is switched on and power is supplied, an impact signal will be generated to cause the leakage protector to malfunction; the sum of the leakages from multiple branches can cau
When the neutral line is repeatedly grounded, the leakage protection device will shunt and refuse to move; when the power supply lacks phase, the missing phase is the working current of the leakage
When the source is turned on, a refusal will occur.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that the leakage protection device has the problems of misoperation and refusal in actual use. This article describes the basics of
In this structure and principle, the effects of the frequency and distortion of ground current on the protection and malfunction of the earth leakage protector in electric shock protection are mainly stud

1 Electric shock
Most electric shocks and equipment damage are caused by electric shock. Generally speaking, an electric shock accident basically refers to electric shock.
According to the state of electrical equipment, electric shock can be divided into direct contact electric shock and indirect contact electric shock. The former is when the human body touches the

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12/1/2019 Effects of the Earth Current Frequency and Distortion on Residual Current Devices
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Electric shock that occurs when an electric body; the latter is an electric shock that occurs when a human body touches a charged body that is uncharged under normal conditions and accidentally char
The former is also called the electric shock in the normal state, and the latter is also called the electric shock in the fault state.

According to the way the human body touches the charged body and the way the current passes through the human body, the electric shock can be divided into single-phase electric shock, two-p
Single-phase electric shock refers to the electric shock of the human body on the ground or other grounded conductor, and a part of the human body touched a one-phase charged body. Most electric s
It is a single-phase electric shock. The danger of single-phase electric shock is related to the operation mode of the power grid. Under normal circumstances, a single-phase electric shock in a grounde
The net is dangerous. Two-phase electric shock refers to an electric shock accident in which two parts of the human body touch two-phase charged bodies at the same time, and the danger is generally

When a body ground has a current flowing into the ground, the current generates a voltage drop in the soil around the ground point. When a person is around a grounded body, the voltage between the
Step voltage. The resulting electric shock is called step voltage shock. High-voltage fault grounding or near grounding devices where large currents may flow
The higher step voltage [5] .

IEC 60479-1 specifies four areas of current / time relationship, describing the pathological physiological effects of the human body in each area, as shown in Figure 1,
The horizontal axis represents the magnitude of the current flowing through the human body, and the vertical axis represents the duration of the current. The meaning of each area in the picture is as fo
Indicates perception; AC-3 indicates muscle contraction with reversible effects; AC-4 indicates possible irreversible effects; AC-4-1 indicates heart
Fibrillation can be up to 5%; AC-4-2 indicates that the fibrillation of the heart can reach 50%; AC-4-3 indicates that the fibrillation of the heart can exceed 50%;
The meanings of the curves in the figure are as follows: A curve represents the current sensing threshold; B curve represents the muscle response threshold; C1 curve represents 0% chance of ventricu
Fibrillation threshold; C2 curve represents a 5% chance ventricular fibrillation threshold; C3 curve represents a 50% chance ventricular fibrillation threshold [6] . Take the curve

C1 is taken as an example. When the current passes through the human body, if the current exceeds 30 mA, the human body is likely to be killed by electric shock, unless the current can be relatively
Is cut off within the time.

Figure 1 Area map of ill physiological effects of electric shock

2 working principle of earth leakage protector

Figure 2 Example of appearance of current leakage protector

Leakage protectors can be divided into two types according to the type of action signal: current-type leakage protectors and voltage-type leakage protectors. The former is based on fault current
Action, the latter is based on fault voltage. Due to the complicated structure of the voltage type leakage protector, the stability of the operating characteristics is poor due to external interference, and i

The high cost has basically been eliminated. The research and application of leakage protectors at home and abroad are dominated by current leakage protectors.

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Current-type leakage protectors use a part of the zero-sequence current in the circuit (usually called residual current) as the operating signal, and generally use electronic components
As an intermediate mechanism, the component has high sensitivity and complete functions, so this protection device is more and more widely used [7] . As shown in Figure 3, the current type

The leakage protector is mainly composed of three parts:

Zero-sequence current transformer (TR, ferranti transformer in the figure): the protected phase lines L1, L2, L3 and neutral line N pass through the ring core,
The primary coil of the transformer, and the winding wound on the iron core constitute the secondary coil of the transformer. If no leakage occurs, three phases flow through

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12/1/2019 Effects of the Earth Current Frequency and Distortion on Residual Current Devices
The current vector sum of the line and the neutral line is zero, no alternating magnetic field can be generated, and the secondary coil of the transformer cannot generate induced current. If a leakage oc
The sum of the current vectors across the three phase and neutral lines is not zero. The secondary coil of the transformer generates the induced current Is and enters the trip structure for further proces
Trip structure (WS, tripping mechanism in the figure): Includes amplifier, comparator, trip unit and main switch. Where the amplifier is right
The induced current Is from the zero-sequence current transformer is amplified; the comparator compares the amplified induced current Is and the rated residual operating current; the induced current

When Is is greater than or equal to the rated residual operating current, the trip unit and the main switch perform actions to automatically cut off the power at the fault to complete the leakage protectio
Test button (T, test button in the picture): regularly check whether the leakage protector is intact and reliable. Simulate the leakage by pressing the test button
Way, check whether the earth leakage protector works normally.

Figure 3 Schematic diagram of the internal structure of the leakage protector

3 Effect of ground current frequency and distortion

This section mainly analyzes the impact of current frequency and distortion on the protection of the electric shock protector in the circuit with frequency conversion function.

Figure 4 Ground current waveform in the frequency conversion circuit

Frequency conversion is generally used to control the speed of squirrel-cage motors. Figure 4 shows a schematic diagram of a frequency converter circuit with a leakage protector. RCD in the p
Residual Current Device. The frequency conversion circuit is mainly composed of three parts: the first part is a rectifier,
The waveform is rectified; the second part is an intermediate DC circuit that filters the output waveform of the rectifier; the third part is an inverter that converts the intermediate DC power
The direct current generated by the circuit is inverted into alternating current of the required frequency. After the alternating current passes through the frequency conversion circuit, it changes from lo
After the fault current passes the frequency conversion circuit, the frequency increases.
At a current frequency of 50Hz, the threshold value of the sensed current is 0.5mA, that is, under a given 50Hz condition, it flows through the human body and causes the human body to have a
The minimum sensed current is 0.5 mA. From Figure 1, it is known that the current threshold that causes the human muscle to lose control and muscle contraction in the duration of 2s

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It is 10 mA, and the threshold of current that causes ventricular fibrillation and is life-threatening is 30 to 40 mA.
For higher-frequency currents, the threshold for human perception of current, muscle response threshold, and ventricular fibrillation threshold also increase. Figure 5 shows three

A graph of the threshold value as a function of frequency.

Figure 5 Curve of threshold value versus frequency in the range of 50 ~ 1000Hz

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12/1/2019 Effects of the Earth Current Frequency and Distortion on Residual Current Devices
When the frequency is equal to 1000 Hz, the threshold value of ventricular fibrillation changes from 30 to 40 mA to 420 mA. This is very important information, because if
The frequency of the grounding current is higher than 50Hz, and the tripping current of many leakage protectors increases significantly.
In order to study the effect of the frequency of the ground current on the tripping of the earth leakage protector, under the conditions of the rated residual operating current ΔI n = 30 and 100 mA
Multiple leakage protectors were tested. Figures 6, 7 and 8 show test results under laboratory conditions.

Figure 6 AC type leakage protector tripping current with ΔIn = 30mA

Figure 6 shows the curve of AC-type earth leakage protector tripping current and ventricular fibrillation threshold with frequency under the condition of ΔIn = 30mA.

The solid line represents the change of the ventricular fibrillation threshold with frequency, and the dashed line represents the magnitude of the trip current from 1 to 1000 Hz. It can be concluded from
The tripping current of the earth leakage protector depends on the frequency of the ground current. When the frequency is higher than 50Hz, the trip current is much smaller than the ventricular fibrill

Therefore, in the test frequency range, when an electric shock occurs, the human body does not generate ventricular fibrillation, and the AC leakage protector can play a positive role.
Protection against electric shock.
Figure 7 shows the curve of the tripping current and ventricular fibrillation threshold of A-type earth leakage protector with frequency under the condition of ΔIn = 100mA.
It can be seen from the figure that the tripping current is much larger than the threshold value of ventricular fibrillation. Therefore, in the test frequency range, the human body can

Can produce ventricular fibrillation, type A earth leakage protector cannot provide normal shock protection.
Figure 8 shows the change of the tripping current and ventricular fibrillation threshold of the short-delay AC type leakage protector with frequency under the condition of ΔI n = 100mA.

Into the curve. It can be seen from the figure that in the frequency range of 100Hz to 650Hz, the trip current is much smaller than the threshold value of ventricular fibrillation, that is, at this frequency
Within the range, when the electric shock occurs, the human body will not produce ventricular fibrillation. The short-time-delay AC type leakage protector can provide normal electric shock protectio
effect.

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Figure 7: ΔIn = 100mA, tripping current of type A leakage protector Figure 8: ΔIn = 100mA, tripping current of short-time AC type leakage protector

Fig. 9 The influence of harmonics on the tripping current of AC leakage protectors

The ground current in the frequency conversion circuit generally contains each harmonic, causing its waveform distortion. Experimental research shows that the higher the harmonic order in the

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12/1/2019 Effects of the Earth Current Frequency and Distortion on Residual Current Devices
The larger the tripping current of the leakage protector. Figure 9 shows that under the condition of ΔI n = 100mA, each harmonic will trip the AC leakage protection device.

Influence of current, the actual operating current corresponding to its fundamental wave is 65mA. Tests have shown that higher harmonics of ground current may increase the leakage protection
Should be the actual operating current.

4 summary
The leakage protector can effectively protect the safety of people and electrical equipment in the event of an electric shock. However, the choice of leakage protector must be very
Be careful. In the frequency conversion circuit, the frequency and waveform of the ground current will change, affecting the electric shock protection of the leakage protector. This article studies the c
The effect of ground current frequency and distortion on the tripping current has a certain practical significance for the correct selection of leakage protectors.

R EFERENCES
[1] IEC 60364-4-41 Electrical Installations of Buildings. Protection for Safety. Protection against Electric Shock.

[2] Qiang Guo, Wenzhong Liu. Cascading Electric Leakage Fire Warning System Based on CAN Bus [J]. Computer Engineering and

Applications. 2007, 43 (12): 246-248.

[3] Giuseppe Parise, Luigi Martirano, and Massimo Mitolo. Electrical Safety of Street Light Systems [J]. IEEE Transactions on Power

Delivery, 2011, 26 (3): 1952-1959.

[4] M. Mitolo, M. Tartaglia, and F. Freschi. To Bond or not to Bond: That is the Question [J]. IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl. 2011,

47 (2): 989--995.

[5] Shengxian Wang, Tao Zheng and Lishuang Shen. A Tentative Discussion on Appendix AA in GB 4706.12 [J]. China

Standardization. 2012, 1: 66-68.

[6] IEC Technical Report 479-1: 1994 Effects of Current on Human Beings and Livestock.

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[7] S. Czapp. Protection against Electric Shock Using Residual Current Devices in Circuits with Electronic Equipment [J]. Electronics

and Electrical Engineering, 2007, 4 (76): 51-54.

【About the Author】

Wang Weineng (1983-), male, Han nationality, PhD, workerZhiqiang Wang (1979-), male, Han nationality, graduate student, engineer, mainly engaged in festivals

Engineer, mainly engaged in the testing and development ofEnergy

electrical
Technology
energy measuring
Research.instruments
Email: wangzq@126.com

hair. Email: wangwn@126.com

Peng Xiao (1979-), male, Han nationality, mainly engaged in the detection and development of electrical energy measuring instruments

hair. Email: pengx@126.com

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