Three-phase Making Test Method for Common Type Circuit Breaker

The synthetic short-circuit making test to adequately stress the circuit breaker has been specified as the mandatory test duty in the IEC 62271-100. The purpose of this test is to give the maximum pre-arcing energy during making operation. And this requires the making operation with symmetrical short-circuit current that is established when the breakdown between contact gap occurs near the crest of the applied voltage. Also, if the interrupting chamber of circuit breakers is designed as the type of common enclosure or the operation is made by the gang operated mechanism that three-phase contacts are operated by one common mechanism, three-phase synthetic making test is basically required. Therefore, several testing laboratories have developed and proposed their own test circuits to properly evaluate the breaker performance. With these technical backgrounds, we have developed the new alternative three-phase making circuit.