High-voltage and high-current technology, although extremely important to the electric power industry and high-energy physics research, suffers from inadequate published technical material on measurement techniques. In particular, among the books available in English, there has been no single source of up-to-date information on recent developments in the use of surge-test oscilloscopes, impulse voltage dividers, and other equipment. To fill this void, the present work has been translated from its German original, published in 1969. In addition, the author has included more recent results and has adapted the book to American usage.
This book provides a survey of measurement techniques, and it is written from the point of view of the power engineer, as opposed to the electronics engineer, since power pulses are coming to be employed more frequently outside the normal high-voltage field. It will enable the power engineer to become familiar with methods of handling rapidly changing nonsinusoidal quantities that are distorted by the accompanying high-level electromagnetic interference common in high-voltage technology.
The origin and suppression of this interference are discussed in the first chapter, which is intended as an introduction to the field. The more common methods of measuring high arc and dc voltages are covered in another chapter. The book also includes a section on the measurement of static electrification, which occurs on plastics in both technical and nontechnical areas. Recent progress in high-voltage dissipation factor measurements, made possible by the development of the transformer-ratio arm bridge, is discussed in detail, and partial discharge measurements are included. The measurement of electric field distribution has been omitted since literature on this subject is already available.
