Condition Assessment of HV Circuit Breaker Contacts Using Dynamic Resistance Measurements

Dynamic resistance measurement is a circuit breaker condition monitoring technique which contains a large amount of information about the condition of circuit breaker contacts. This research paper investigates the behaviour of a set of parameters which is extracted from dynamic resistance measurement, namely arcing contact travel, maximum resistance, the area under dynamic resistance measurement curve and average main contact resistance. Eighteen circuit breaker poles with similar design parameters were selected and used to study the behaviour of these parameters when ageing. Physical observations from a case study were used to identify the relationship of parameter values to actual physical condition. The information extracted through observations were applied to create a model based on Fuzzy logic to obtain the condition of arcing and main contacts of a circuit breaker of similar design.