CHAPTER 1 Fast-Acting Fuses There is a fundamental need to pro- fect all types of electrical equipment ‘against overload and fault conditions, Failure to observe this requirement can have serious, if not disastrous, conse ‘quences, ‘The high magnitude of current pre- gent during a short circuit can cause failure of critical equipment; the mag. netic forces produce mechanical dam. age, including distortion of bus-bars; the Possibility exists of an electrical ex Plosion; and ultimately, there is an ex. tremely hazardous fire risk, Precautions must therefore be made to limit the level of current attained during the fault and interrupt this cure rent a8 quickly as possible. There are a number of different techniques which may be employed for protecting ele cal equipment Adjustment in electrical design . The inclusion of thermal of mag- ‘etic circuit breakers © Electronic sensing and control techniques, and 4. The use of fuses, All of these techniques have their own ‘merit and are utilized in rectifier equip. ment design. In @ de welding stack, for example, the ‘electrical design is such that the {transformer has a high reactance, so that even under short circuit conditions, the fault current is limited to the full rated load current. Welding equipment is usually operated on an Intermittent duty cycle and is designed accordingly. Adequate overload protection can be Provided by thermal circuit breakers. In some traction equipment it is not Practical to use fuses; therefore, adjust- Ment is made in electrical design to safeguard against fault conditions. This usually necessitates increasing the num ber of parallelconnected semiconductor rectifiers in the equipment to withstand short circuit conditions for. several cycles until the circuit breaker clears, Electronic sensing could use a feed- back loop so that the thyristor control oF other control means ean abst to the output current in such a way as to limit short circuit currents Fuses have traditionally been used for years to protect electrical circuits from overloads and short circuit condi tions. With the development of power semiconductors, special fuses have been developed to ' protect the semicon. ductors. In many applications, a combination of protective means is utilized and co, ‘ordination between the various means i essential, FUSES A fuse is a device which protects « circuit by fusing (melting) oper its cur ent responsive element when an over current oF short circuit current pass rough it. A typical fuse would utiliz. 4 silver wire or a silver or other meta! link housed in a suitable package. When 4 critical current-time relationship is ap blied to the fuse, the wire or link melt. which opens the circuit. Obsiously there are innumerable combinations of fuses depending upon the current, th voltage, the application and the ‘pro. fective ‘characteristics required. for tly fuse, FAST-ACTING FUSES FOR SEM) CONDUCTORS tis well recognized that silicon rect fier diodes and controlled rectifiers have relatively little thermal storage capacityFor this reason, they are not able suc- cessfully to carry heavy overloads when these are superimposed on hase loads lose 10 maximum device ratings High values of current cause two harmful effects on. semiconductor diodes and thyristors. Due to non- uniform current distribution at the junc tion, damage is caused by the creation of abnormal current densities, Secondly, 4 high temperature condition is created Proportional to the product I2t In normal industrial applications of semiconductors, fault currents of many thousands of amperes could oceur if an electrical fault were to develop some where in the circuit. If the semicon ductor devices are to be protected against fault currents, the protection equipment chosen must, a) interrupt safely very high prospective fault cure rents in extremely short times, b) limit the value of current allowed to pass through to the device, c) limit the ther- mal energy (121) let-through to the de- vice during fault interruption Unfortunately, —ultrarapidinter- ruption of such large currents leads to the creation of high overvoltages. If a silicon rectifier is subjected to a high ‘overvoltage, it will fail due to break- down phenomena, The protective device Selected must, therefore, e, also limit the overvoltage during fault interruption. INNER car ~pure sinven So far, consideration hus mainly been iven to protection against high fault current. In order to htain maximum Utilization of the device, coupled with complete reliability, the protective de vice selected must, d) never require maintenance, e) never operate at normal fated current or during normal transient overload conditions, {) always operate in a predetermined’ manner when ab- normal conditions occur. The only device to possess all of these qualities at an economical cost is the fastacting semiconductor type fuse The International Rectifier Semi conductor Fuse has heen developed to coordinate with the power semicon~ ductors currently available on the mar- ket CONSTRUCTION ‘A cross-sectional view through a typ- cal International Rectifier Semicon. ductor Fuse is shown in Figure I. It consists of one or more pure silver elements surrounded by pure quartz sili a filler and contained within a ceramic barrel All of the Intemational Rectifier Semiconductor Fuses are constructed with a high-grade ceramic such as alumi- na for the cartridge barrel. It was spe- cially chosen for its ability to withstand hhigh thermal, mechanical and electrical ELEMENT WELDED _— INNER CaP Figure 1. Cross Sectional View of Fuseshocks. Ceramic has the advantage of being able (o operate at high tempers: ture without any adverse effects oF chemical change. ‘Although each component plays 4 significant part in the performance of the fuse, the heart of the fuse is the silver element, "The fuse elements are silver manv- factured to extremely close mechanical tolerances. The elements are produced from pure silver strip of specified hard- ness to insure consistency in perform- Each element has a number of short, narrow restrictions connected together by a number of areas of larger cross section, ‘The basic element design is based on several conflicting require ments, It must have a minimum te- Sistance for a given cross-section of re- Striction and, at the same time, have enough such restrictions of the current geometry in series to cope with the System voltage. The actual shape of the Clement was designed with the aid of a ‘Computer to provide the required opera- ting characteristics. ‘The filler is composed of pure silica quartz of controlled size. The filler is Carefully dried before use and com- Dacted within the bare by ‘mechanical vibration. "The fuse elements are welded to in- ividually electro-tinned brass innercaps Which have been pressed onto the cer: Gmic barrels to provide a close inter ference fit. The barrel is then filed with a quartz filler and the outer caps sre pressed on, insuring a perfect mechani- Bar fit and a good electrical contact This method of construction insures that the silver elements are mechanically independent of the extemal connectors; thus extemal stresses cannot be trans: mitted to the fuse elements. The outer Tap and blade are an integral single piece sembly. This assembly is @ hot brass forging where all mechanical stresses are Automatically relieved. This integral Construction provides tremendous mechanical strength and by acting as 3 Substantial heat sink provides a coot unning fuse. In no part of the fuse is ‘any solder used, thus insuring that there an be no deterioration and nuisance- blowing due to the melting of soldered Connections or applied alloys to the silver elements, "Ail outer caps and blades are indive ually electroplated ‘International Rectifier Semicon- ductor Fuses are manufactured in 2 modern plant, employing the latest manufacturing techniques. The fuses are Subject to. rigid quality control 9ro- gram, Under this program, all com: Fonents are subyeeted to an intense Perutiny including elaborate testing of Fandom samples. The completed fuses gre 100% tested for resistance. In addi Hon, samples from cach batch are Checked for rating, It, peak current nd atc voltage values. All these tests are aarried out in laboratories located in the franufacturing plant. The plant also omesses two high power test staions, Poth calibrated and approved by Under Writers’ Laboratories, capable of Pro- Ving, fault currents in excess of 200,000. FUSE OPERATION Sec opersion of any fuse depends prmanayton the balance between the ica generated. within the cl rae thetrate of hea dissipated 0 ental connections andthe sounds Stratosphere. Saeerement values up to the Figure 4. Fuse Used for Short Cireuit Protectionthe first case, it is desirable to provide fuses which can protect the diodes or thyristors from damage due to high fault currents. To do this without great- ly limiting the loading of the semicom ductor devices becomes a restricting problem in fuse selection. The pro- ‘cedure for selecting the proper fuse for this application will be shown in the following sections. In many other appl cations, the object is to protect the rectifier equipment from damage due to short circuit, either external or internal, External faults are usually removed by circuit breakers actuated by appropriate overcurrent relays. In large rectifiers, number of semiconductors are connec- ted in parallel in each leg of the circuit, It is common practice to connect a fuse in series with each of the semicon- ductors to isolate a failed (short cir. ‘cuited) device. The specifying of proper ‘isolating fuses will be covered in later sections, PROTECTING SEMICONDUCTOR DE- VICES Fault currents in rectifier applications ‘may result from short circuits, either in the rectifier cells or in the external con- nections. International Rectifier Semicon ductor Fuses are specially designed to rapidly interrupt such high currents ‘order to protect healthy diodes and thy- ristors, Silicon diodes and thyristors, due to their small mass, have a very limited over- load capacity. This can be represented by an overload curve similar to the operating time/current characteristic curve of & fuse. Figures 3 and 4 indicate diagram- matically two alternative methods of use ing fuses to protect diodes or thyristors ‘over the full range of overloads, Figure 3 indicates how a fuse could he used to provide complete protection but such applications are usually limited to low ower installations or installations where ‘Adequate rectifying capacity is available. Figure 4 indicates the more commonly used system in which the fuse is used for short circuit protection only; and normal ‘overload protection is provided hy a e cuit breaker or other means depending ‘on the application, In general, the protective systems ‘employed can’be split into two groups: 1. Interruption of the short circuits by: a. fuse and/or circuit breaker on the ac side b, fuse and/or circuit breaker on the de side © fuse in series with semicon- ductors 4d. current limiting by-pass switch, 2. Limitation of the amplitude andj or the rate of the rite of the prospective short circuit currents by: 4. additional line reactances b. transformer impedances ©. additional inductance and resis- tance in the de circuit. In practice, itis general to use one or ‘more of the’ sbove methods. Conse- quently, many aspects of the fuse, semi- conductor devices and other associated protective equipment have to be co- ordinated or matched to give a reliable and economic” protection for any scheme. ‘The various factors to be considered are listed in Table Il, and the major factors are amplified in the following chapters. Since there are as yel no na- tional or international specifications Gealing with fuses for the protection of semiconductor devices, fuse manufac- turers have used their own methods for assigning ratings and. obtaining per formance data. This sometimes makes it difficult to carry out direct comparison. In view of this, we have stated clearly how the ratings are devised for the International Rectifier Semiconductor Fuses. The problems of protection are outlined further with typical applica- tions and clarified by practical exam- Dies.