Testing and development of alternative flexible-bus geometries for interconnected substation equipment subjected to earthquakes

This paper presents the results of a study aimed at developing alternative flexible-bus geometries in an aim to minimize earthquake effects on interconnected substation equipment. The approach chosen was to develop universal configurations that could be applied between any given pairs of components for a given voltage level and specific ground acceleration. Both dynamic testing and the nonlinear finite-element method were used to achieve this goal. The main product of this study takes the form of tables for each voltage level considered recommending one or more configurations according to the span.