학술논문

Electrocution Risk of Capacitive Discharge Shocks: Application to Electric Vehicle Charging
Document Type
Conference
Source
2022 44th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC) Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC), 2022 44th Annual International Conference of the IEEE. :1418-1422 Jul, 2022
Subject
Bioengineering
Fibrillation
Electric shock
Capacitors
Voltage
High-voltage techniques
Capacitance
Discharges (electric)
Language
ISSN
2694-0604
Abstract
It is difficult to electrocute (induce ventricular fibrillation) with capacitive discharge shocks. With small capacitance values, the high voltages required for the necessary charge are rarely seen in industrial situations (e.g. electric vehicle charging stations). On the other hand, with large capacitance values, the discharge time is so great that the shock couples inefficiently with the cardiac cells. The update to IEC 60479–2 sets the C1 “mostly-safe” charge limit of 3 mC for a short “impulse function” pulse. We calculated the equivalent capacitor stored charge for an arbitrary capacitance value using the simple single membrane time constant model for the cardiac response. The peak membrane response was set equal to that of the 3 mC impulse function response to calculate the safe values for stored charge, voltage, and energy. The total stored charge, per se, cannot be used simplistically to estimate the danger of a capacitive discharge shock. A capacitive-discharge shock cannot be accurately compared to a rectangular shock with a duration equal to the shock time constant. The greater the capacitance, the larger the fraction of wasted charge in coupling to the heart and thus the shorter equivalent duration compared to the shock time constant. For a capacitive discharge shock this translates to a stored charge of 3 mC increasing up to 9 mC for a 10 capacitor using the assumed 575 load for an electric-vehicle (EV) charging station. In the area of interest for 1 – 10 the safe voltage ranges from 1300 to 4700 V, which includes the 1500-V DC scope of EV charger standard IEC 61851–23. For C > 100 the voltage asymptote is 700 V.