Development of Virtual Impulse Laboratory

Abstract

Natural phenomena such as lightning result in transient overvoltages and overcurrents thus interrupting the power supply. To avoid this, an analysis of impulse voltages and currents is a must. Apart from existing high voltage laboratories, a need was felt to develop a virtual laboratory which being user-interactive will have facilities for generating virtual impulse voltages and currents. Hence an interactive web based laboratory is introduced now to determine the impulse generator settings in order to virtually realize standard impulse voltages and currents. This solution also aims to develop software that enables the user to pre-select the values of circuit elements that will be required to generate impulse voltages and currents for test purposes. These impulses have to meet a voltage-time-curve with certain tolerances according to IEC 60060-1 [7]. This application makes the software useful for impulse testing of power apparatus. The input is fed by the user using the web based interface. These values sent by the client machine are then received by the server. The server processes the input data using the software which runs using programs in Java and PHP. If need arises to access the available database, developed using MSSQL, the database is accessed. The output data is then sent to the client machine and is displayed in Java applet on the user's browser.