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Associate

Join Date: Oct 2008
Location: South Africa and China
Posts: 52
Good Answers: 1

Fast Transients/Burst Immunity for SCR

02/21/2014 1:24 AM

Although the problems of preventing SCRs from turning on when it encounters high dV/dt transients are extensively covered in various publications and websites, utilizing RC snubber circuits, these documents normally discuss the applications for motor control, flyback, switch mode power supplies, etc. These applications are mostly for AC systems and very seldom investigate the fast transients/burst protection schemes for equipment that needs to comply with IEC 61000-4-4 in an DC switching environment.
In an application where a SCR is used to discharge a capacitor into a low ohm pyrotechnic device, in a very electrically noisy environment, proofs to be a bit of a challenge. The equipment must comply to the IEC 61000-4-4 (Level 4) specification for Fast Transient/Burst immunity. In this test, the lines driving the pyrotechnic device are subjected to a transient waveform of 50ns at 2kV with a repetition frequency of 5 or 100Khz. Using a BT152B-600R SCR, 4700uF capacitor charge at 24V and using a 0.1uF 400V polyester capacitor, 22R 2W resistor as snubber across the SCR, the objective was achieved in preventing the SCR from switching on during the application of the fast transients, even at 4kV.
The question is: Is this the optimum snubber design? The capacitor and resistor values were randomly picked and no calculations were performed to determine the optimal values.

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Power-User

Join Date: Nov 2011
Posts: 258
Good Answers: 2
#1

Re: Fast Transients/Burst Immunity for SCR

02/22/2014 6:50 AM

For snubber - I feel you should use Polypropylene capacitors and not polyester capacitors. di/dt needs to be checked as the capacitor discharges through the series resistor and the charged capacitor when SCR turns on. Unless you have a inductor (non- dissipative) or resistive load in series with SCR (paralleled capacitor) supply, dv/dt is not controlled. Both dv/dt and di/dt should be within limits.

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Guru
Canada - Member - Specialized in power electronics

Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Montreal, Canada.
Posts: 1372
Good Answers: 80
#2

Re: Fast Transients/Burst Immunity for SCR

02/22/2014 8:04 AM

Make sure that the gate driver doesn't give a parasitic pulse from the transformer's inter-windings capacitance or other couplings. Use twisted pairs for the gate wiring and potentially the power circuit to minimize parasitic coupling.

Unintended gate pulses would basically nullify your efforts on the snubber.

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Power-User

Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 250
Good Answers: 7
#3

Re: Fast Transients/Burst Immunity for SCR

02/24/2014 7:08 AM

Use a low inductance resistor. A metallised polypropylene capacitor will show about 1 nanohenry for every millimeter in height. Try to simulate the effect of those stray inductances on your transient pulses. And remember, cosmic radiation may switch your SCR too...

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