Scholarly record

EVALUATION OF NONLINEAR CIRCUITS WITH INTRINSIC SAFETY USING SPARK TEST APPARATUS SIMULATOR

Dănuț Grecea

Abstract

Explosion prevention and explosion protection are of major importance for occupational health and safety in order to minimize losses (both human and material). This paper aims to increase the ability to evaluate intrinsically safe protection equipment by using the standardized means and the simulation based on the ignition diagrams within the equipment certification body to perform tests on low current equipment protected by the type of protection intrinsic safety intended for use in explosive atmospheres by implementing specific requirements. For simple circuits with a nonlinear characteristic it is possible to assess the non-ignition capability using the standardized means and the simulation based on the ignition diagrams of the SR EN 60079-25 standard. The first part of the paper presents the analysis and characterization of nonlinear sources use in intrinsic safety circuits. The second part of the paper presents the computer application developed in MATLAB/Simulink platform, which will facilitate the assessment of low current circuits according to the possible failure scenarios. The pre-processed data from the reference charts and tables available in the reference standard make it possible to carry out an application prototype for evaluating simple circuitry of low currents, being validated by the application presented in this article.

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