Electrical switching apparatus, circuit interrupter and method of interrupting overcurrents of a power circuit

A circuit interrupter includes a housing, separable contacts, and an operating mechanism including a latch. The operating mechanism opens the contacts responsive to actuation of the latch. A trip mechanism cooperates with the latch to trip open the contacts. The trip mechanism includes a thermal ove...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors BENSHOFF RICHARD G, MCCORMICK JAMES M, MILLS PATRICK W, GONYEA KEVIN D
Format Patent
LanguageChinese
English
Published 13.02.2013
Subjects
BASIC ELECTRIC ELEMENTS
ELECTRIC SWITCHES
ELECTRICITY
EMERGENCY PROTECTIVE DEVICES
RELAYS
SELECTORS
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Summary:A circuit interrupter includes a housing, separable contacts, and an operating mechanism including a latch. The operating mechanism opens the contacts responsive to actuation of the latch. A trip mechanism cooperates with the latch to trip open the contacts. The trip mechanism includes a thermal overload mechanism actuating the latch responsive to a thermal fault caused by current flowing through the contacts, a solenoid cooperating with the thermal overload mechanism to actuate the latch responsive to the electromagnetic device being energized, and a processor repetitively determining a value of the current flowing through the contacts, determining if the value exceeds a predetermined value for a number of occurrences, and responsively energizing the solenoid, in order to actuate the latch contemporaneous with actuation of the latch by the thermal overload mechanism, in order to decrease the time to trip open the contacts.
Bibliography:Application Number: CN200880100023