Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Snubber
Summary
A snubber is a device used to suppress ("snub") a phenomenon such as voltage transients in electrical systems, pressure transients in fluid systems (caused by for example water hammer) or excess force or rapid movement in mechanical systems.
Snubbers are frequently used in electrical systems with an inductive load where the sudden interruption of current flow leads to a large counter-electromotive force: a rise in voltage across the current switching device that opposes the change in current, in accordance with Faraday's law. This transient can be a source of electromagnetic interference (EMI) in other circuits. Additionally, if the voltage generated across the device is beyond what the device is intended to tolerate, it may damage or destroy it. The snubber provides a short-term alternative current path around the current switching device so that the inductive element may be safely discharged. Inductive elements are often unintentional, arising from the current loops implied by physical circuitry like long and/or tortuous wires. While current switching is everywhere, snubbers will generally only be required where a major current path is switched, such as in power supplies. Snubbers are also often used to prevent arcing across the contacts of relays and switches, or the electrical interference, or the welding of the contacts that can occur (see also arc suppression).
A simple RC snubber uses a small resistor (R) in series with a small capacitor (C). This combination can be used to suppress the rapid rise in voltage across a thyristor, preventing the erroneous turn-on of the thyristor; it does this by limiting the rate of rise in voltage ( ) across the thyristor to a value which will not trigger it. An appropriately designed RC snubber can be used with either DC or AC loads. This sort of snubber is commonly used with inductive loads such as electric motors. The voltage across a capacitor cannot change instantaneously, so a decreasing transient current will flow through it for a fraction of a second, allowing the voltage across the switch to increase more slowly when the switch is opened.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.