Accelerated Aging of Fuse Cutouts
Fuse Cutouts are devices which act similarly to standard fuses except they are for hi voltage systems. The fuse will literally explode out of the device to form a disconnect if the current through it exceeds a rated value. Cutouts are mainly used to improve system reliability as they are mainly a protection device, but they also can be manually opened to change energy flows.
We are testing two samples of seven different types of fuse cutouts. First we exposed each sample to UV radiation. Next the samples were ran through our fog chamber for 1000 hours. Each 24 hours, leakage current waveforms were recorded using a 14 channel DAC run by MATLAB. Now we are in the process of performing a Partial Discharge test on each aged sample. We hope to be able to rank the seven different products from worst to best performing based upon these tests. We may also place the samples back in the fog chamber and run the test longer untill the samples begin to break down.
