INVESTIGATION ON FUSE ELECTRICAL BEHAVIOR AT HIGH-FREQUENCY

Nowadays, the development of power semiconductors has made that fuses used for their protection have to be improved. The high working freque ncy of IGBT leads to a modification of fuse characteristics. For high frequencies, it may occur a bad working due to an unequal current dist ribution between two fuses in parallel, or even between fuse's element s. The result is that fuse operates at below rated current. This unexp ected operation can be attributed to proximity effects which are conse quences of electromagnetic laws between close conductors. To prevent s uch a failure, their current rating must be reduced as a function of f requency and distance between the fuselink and other conductors (e.g. the return conductor).