New electrical shunt with two rectangular holes in a copper plate

Abstract

A new concept of an electrical shunt with two rectangular holes in a copper plate (ESRP) has been developed to be used for measuring a large current with a short-duration steep wave in a high-voltage field. The ratio of the input current to the output current is 106, as obtained from a DC voltage test circuit. The electrical shunt has a special configuration. To verify the shunt current ratio of ESRP in a real application, the shunt current was connected to a sphere-to-sphere electrode breakdown test circuit with a 10 mm gap to measure the large damping current (8.4 kA) of a DC breakdown voltage. The voltage signal from the shunt was transmitted to excite two light-emitting diodes (max. 50 mA, 4 V), which were reverse-connected in series. The light-emitting diodes operated properly and were illuminated, which validated the capability of the newly designed electrical shunt.