Monitoring, diagnosis and safety-related functions for surge protective devices for the use in MCR applications

Surge voltages can cause damage to the electronic equipment of measurement, control and regulation systems (MCR systems). The use of specially designed surge protective devices (SPDs) provides effective protection against this kind of stress and ensures a high operational availability of these systems. The newly developed SPD presented is based on a 2-state protection circuit featuring low impulse-limiting voltage and high surge current handling capability. Moreover, the SPD contains new overload protection functions which ensure - especially in case of use in MCR applications with a high operation voltage level and high short circuit energies - a maximum level of product safety. To permit condition-oriented and predictive maintenance, monitoring and diagnosis functions for the evaluation of the condition of the protective components are developed. The results presented, provide practical information for the design of future-orientated products for the protection of MCR systems.