Ground Fault?

Question

For training purposes, how can I build a ground fault for testing. Also, what other combinations are there too.

Answer 1

A ground fault is an ungrounded conductor (hot wire) that shorts to ground. A phase to phase or bar to bar fault is 2 ungrounded (hot wires) shorted together. A bolted fault is a solidly connected bar to bar or phase to phase short circuit.

All of these can be very dangerous to fool with. Arc flashes and explosions are likely to happen.

Electricians watch movies of these conditions. We don't actually do this type of thing for our training. Contact the Buss Fuse company.

Answer 2

For training purposes you want to test a ground fault plug in manually?

Technically, they are called GFCIs Ground Fault Curcuit Interuptors. If there is electricity feedback through the ground, it will trip and break the circuit. Overloading the circuit will trip the breaker, but that is a seperate test, besides, most GFCIs are 15 amp - it would take one honking bulb to use more than 15 amps!

If you want to test the ground fault, you could create a short - say by cutting a power cord and bareing the wires. I have done this inadvertantly and you won't get shocked if you are holding the wires by the part which is still insulated. A non-GFCI protected circuit goes POP, makes sparks and trips the breaker. A GFCI protected circuit is supposed to trip the GFCI before overloading and tripping the breaker - so if a person was in the loop he wouldn't get shocked.

As to other combinations there is an ark fault protector - only available in a circuit breaker as far as I know - that is required for bedrooms in new construction. These are supposed to detect any ark (which wouldn't necessarily be a ground fault) and trip, thus preventing a fire hazard. If you yank the plug out of the wall while you are vacuuming and get that little blue arc, then that is the kind of thing which will trip an arc fault protector.

That's all I know. If your question is really how do build your own GFCI circuit, then sorry for wasteing your time.

Answer 3

Ground fault receptacles already have a TEST button as part of the outlet. If you press it that makes a fault current that should trip the fault cutoff. You are supposed to use that to test them every month.

If you want to do something external to the outlet you could attach a high wattage light bulb between the live wire and the ground. Its current flow will be high enough to trip the outlet.