Testing device for surgical grounding plates

This paper reports about a new device for safety test of disposable grounding plates for electrosurgery. Neutral electrodes (grounding plates, dispersive electrodes) must fulfill the requirements of the american AAMI HF-18 standard. Instead of measurements on human volunteers an electronic devive was built to simulate human skin. Its conductive surface is devided into a number of 1 cm² pads for a seperately measurement of local current density and local temperature rise. A PC-AT is used as control device and for graphical evaluation of electrical and thermal characteristics of the electrode under test.