Research on the conditioning effects of vacuum interrupter for capacitor switching

The measurement of breakdown of vacuum interrupters after arcing by applying a DC recovery voltage is conducted to study the multiple restrike phenomena in capacitor switching. It is found that the breakdown probability increases with the arcing current until at a specific current value when the full conditioning effect is reached. For practically eliminating the occurrence of multiple restrike phenomena this specific current can be used as the conditioning current so as to accelerate the conditioning process. Such a method is called the enhanced conditioning method because the conditioning current and voltage are much higher than the rated values.