Time Resolved Spectrum of the Fuse Arc Plasma

*Muhammad A. SAQIB and Anthony D. STOKES


Department of Electrical Engineering
The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006
*E-mail: saqib@ee.usyd.edu.au


This paper presents the radiation spectrum of the arc plasma in a simple experimental model of a high voltage, high breakdown capacity (HBC) fuse. A crowbar circuit is applied to force the arcing current to zero. A 62.5 mm diameter multi-mode silica fibre is used as a light-pipe to carry plasma radiation from within the arc space of the experimental fuse to the spectrograph. Temporal resolution is obtained by a specially deigned opto-electronic circuit that moves the fibre along the entrance slit to the spectrograph. Si II, Si III, Ag O and O II lines have been detected in the plasma. It has been observed that only Si II lines last for the whole time for which the arc was scanned. The disappearance of the O II and SI III lines suggest that the plasma temperature drops significantly towards the later stages of arcing.