Combined analysis and test of earthquake‐resistant circuit breakers

Following the severe earthquake damage at San Fernando in 1971, it became of technical and perhaps psychological importance to demonstrate that properly re-designed electrical equipment is able to withstand even worse transient vibration phenomena which can be produced in an earthquake simulator laboratory. This has been accomplished for one column of a 500 kV gas circuit breaker and the test results are used to qualify the much larger original 3-column assembly by means of a computer-aided structural analysis. Since the equipment exhibited some closely spaced, cross-coupled modes of vibration, a valuable comparison could be obtained between the effects produced by El Centro 1940 ground acceleration and those for a more purposeful sine beat vibration input. The latter can be adjusted to produce definite stresses and fatigue effects in specific parts of the equipment due to quasi-resonance response.