For the RLC Network Program PSpice

Man­u­fac­tur­ers and oper­a­tors of elec­tri­cal devices and instal­la­tions are often faced with the prob­lem of eval­u­at­ing and improv­ing their prod­ucts. Regard­less of whether they are employed in the gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion of elec­tri­cal ener­gy, in the pro­duc­tion of goods or in indi­vid­ual house­holds, the devices and plants have to become even more com­pact and effi­cient. The frame size of elec­trotech­ni­cal equip­ment is main­ly deter­mined by the tem­per­a­ture dis­tri­b­u­tion inside the devices and installations.

In the com­pa­nies that man­u­fac­ture elec­tri­cal equip­ment, the ther­mal design of the prod­uct is deter­mined dur­ing prod­uct devel­op­ment. If not suf­fi­cient­ly care­ful and well-found­ed pro­ce­dures are fol­lowed, the actu­al­ly achieved ampac­i­ty of the prod­uct falls short of the one that could be achieved. Val­ue­able capac­i­ties of raw and refined mate­ri­als are thus not exhaust­ed. For all com­pa­nies that want to assert them­selves on the mar­ket with qual­i­ty, how­ev­er, it is nec­es­sary to devel­op pre­cise­ly these reserves as a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. With the help of a ther­mal cal­cu­la­tion mod­el, the crit­i­cal tem­per­a­tures with­in an elec­tri­cal device can be deter­mined depend­ing on its geo­met­ric mea­sure­ments, the qual­i­ties of the mate­ri­als used and the loss due to cur­rent and envi­ron­men­tal influ­ences. Tests are vir­tu­al­ly not required.

Falling back upon research­es done by the Insti­tute of High Volt­age and High Cur­rent Engi­neer­ing at Dres­den Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, THETA has devel­oped a ther­mal net­work library that is based on the ther­mal net­work method. The library enables its users to achieve the desired result with­in a short peri­od of time and with­out spend­ing extra­or­di­nary much mon­ey. Thus it relieves the man­u­fac­tur­ers and users of elec­tri­cal devices and instal­la­tions of the time-and-mon­ey-con­sum­ing way of exper­i­ment­ing and apply­ing oth­er meth­ods of cal­cu­la­tion than the ther­mal cal­cu­la­tion mod­el. The ther­mal cal­cu­la­tion mod­el emu­lates heat trans­fer process­es analo­geous­ly to an elec­tri­cal network.
With its help, a wide range of prod­ucts stand­ing out due to both a high cur­rent-car­ry­ing capac­i­ty and a com­pact design has been devel­oped. Among oth­er things, the tem­per­a­ture dis­tri­b­u­tions of very large trans­form­ers, dis­tri­b­u­tion trans­form­ers in com­pact sta­tions, high-break­ing-capac­i­ty fus­es and gas-insu­lat­ed medi­um-and-high-volt­age switchgear at dif­fer­ent load cur­rents and under dif­fer­ent envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions were simulated.

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