Analysis of Arc Characteristics and Fault Detection in Low Voltage DC System

Abstract

As the DC power system is more and more widely used in electric vehicles, aerospace, electric ships and energy storage systems. DC arc faults occur frequently in these systems. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the characteristics of the dc arc and detect the arc fault timely. Firstly, a low voltage dc arc fault experiment platform is built, and the voltage and current of the DC arc under different test conditions including load types, circuit current amplitude, electrode material and electrode spacing are measured. The amplitude and frequency spectrum of the arc current of the DC arc are analyzed. Additionally, the influence of parameters on the high frequency characteristics of the arc current are investigated. Finally, based on the characteristics of DC arc current, the characteristic parameters of arc fault detection are extracted, and a DC arc fault detection method is proposed.