Quantitative Determination of Response Time and Time-Varying Characteristics of Surge Protective Devices

This paper proposes an effective test setup and method for quantitative determination of critical parameters of surge protective devices (SPDs) when excited by nanosecond level pulse (normally rise time less than 2 ns). The experimental results of SPDs validate the accuracy and reliability of the proposed method. By using the proposed method, the response time and time-varying response characteristics can be evaluated; meanwhile, the incoming voltage and residual voltage of SPDs can be retrieved by simple mathematical operations. These parameters obtained from the proposed method are critical to the device selection when designing the fast response protective module and examining the performance of SPDs by the manufacturers.