Arc Flash Pressure Measurement System Design

Pressure waves from the arc flash incident may pose significant risks to the workers. It is imperative to develop industry safety standards to protect workers from these pressure hazards. Due to the harsh conditions during arc flash, it is difficult to apply traditional pressure measurement methods to obtain accurate pressure data for standard development. Currently, much qualitative or vague quantitative information are widely mentioned or misused among industry. For example, 2100 psi has been mentioned in several arc flash-related articles without detail description about measurement environment or the operation conditions. This paper explores different pressure measurement devices and techniques to overcome the limitations of traditional approaches, including pressure transducers, pendulums, and linear-variable displacement transducers (LVDT) to obtain reliable results under harsh conditions. It is desired to have techniques that are capable of measuring the pressure level of the arc flash as perceived by workers. The air speed estimated from consecutive frames of high-speed video is used as a bench mark to compare the results from different techniques and devices. These results offer valuable information to develop reliable system and techniques to evaluate the potential of pressure hazards during an arc flash.