Research on Fault Diagnosis of High Voltage Circuit Breakers Based on Vibration Signal in Low Temperature Environment

Vacuum circuit breakers (VCBs) are widely used in power systems. The mechanical characteristics of VCBs will be affected by low-temperature environments. A fault feature extraction method based on Variational Mode Decomposition (VMD) and vibration time points is proposed for fault diagnosis in low-temperature environments. The vibration signals of high voltage circuit breakers (HVCBs) under different working conditions from 0° to -30° are extracted in the test. VMD is used to process the collected vibration signal, and Hilbert transform is applied to intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) to obtain the marginal spectral energy entropy of the IMF. The vibration event time points of the vibration signal are extracted as time domain features. The fault characteristics of the HVCB under different energy storage, different ambient temperatures, and unstable circuit voltages are analyzed. It was found that fault features and diagnostic methods based on vibration signals are very effective. The analysis method of vibration signals is suitable for fault feature extraction and diagnosis of HVCBs. The research results provide a reference for fault diagnosis of VCBs in low-temperature environments.