Circuit Breaker | Working And Types | Application

Circuit Breaker

A circuit breaker is an automatically operated electrical switch designed to protect an electrical circuit from damage caused by excess current from an overload or short circuit. Its basic function is to interrupt current flow after a fault is detected. Unlike fuse, it need not to be replaced once get damaged.

Working Principle

Circuit breaker essentially consists of fixed and moving contacts. These contacts are touching each other and carrying the current under normal conditions when the circuit is closed. When the circuit breaker is closed, the current carrying contacts, called the electrodes, engaged each other under the pressure of a spring.

During the normal operating condition, the arms of the circuit breaker can be opened or closed for a switching and maintenance of the system. To open the circuit breaker, only a pressure is required to be applied to a trigger.

Whenever a fault occurs on any part of the system, the trip coil of the breaker gets energized and the moving contacts are getting apart from each other by some mechanism, thus opening the circuit.

Types Of Circuit Breaker

Air Circuit Breakers:

Built between the connections of air that collide in the air atmosphere. Often used in low voltage systems with normal 3000 currents.

In heavy industries that have large electric motors with frequent starting, air CB can replace oil damage and oil contamination. CB air can be used more widely with electric stoves

Oil circuit breaker:

Oil here provides the right container to stop sparks. In oil damage, sparks can be called automatic blackouts. Oil circuit breakers are classified into 2 types, namely large oil and minimum oil. This classification is based on sparks and the ability to stop different types.

Air-Blast Circuit Breakers:

The principle of extinguishing sparks in a CB-Air Blast is to put direct pressure directly on the air that is longitudinal or perpendicular to the spark. Fresh and dry air will quickly occupy the hot gas which is ionized in the sparks zone and the duration of the spark will increase steadily.

Vacuum Circuit Breaker:

The vacuum chamber circuit breaker has a pressure of 10-4 Pa, acts as a strong dielectric and has high insulation ability for other media, including compressed gas and oil. In vacuum breakers, a contact is only 1 cm apart. Because it is very tight, it takes a little power to close and open the circuit for other types of breakers.

Solid-State Circuit Breaker:

This type of circuit breaker uses solid materials such as thyristors, triacs or transistor power. This circuit cannot weaken the electromechanical device. Solid breakers can clean errors with only 1.5 cycles. If the breaker is closed, an error will occur in the circuit, it will still damage the wrong curren with only 1.5 cycles.