Does a safety breaker have a dual function in an electrical circuit?
on a building, there are huge breaks. the detroit fire code dictates the number of breakers to be turned off to eliminate any voltage so that firefighters are not shocked by structural fire. The second function is to open the circuit in case of overcurrent to protect the structure against the heat of the melted wires and the risk of fire.
The safety breaker as a component does not seem to have wide use, I do not know what it is. do you mean safety switch which is a term used in Europe and Australia for a RCD? which is similar to what is called a gfci in the United States.
it has only one function: disconnect a circuit in case of current imbalance that can indicate a potential shock.
Depending on the type of load it serves, a circuit breaker has several functions.
Overcurrent protection. All circuit breakers have a time-current characteristic, which determines the amount of time that the current will allow currents above the tripping threshold, before it trips to interrupt the fault and turn off the circuit. Moderate overcurrent / overload conditions can trip the circuit breaker in seconds to minutes, while very high fault currents (more than ten times the tripping capacity of the circuit breaker) can cause the circuit breaker to trip almost instantaneously. this function is primarily intended to protect the conductors served by the circuit breaker from overheating (and thus fire, endangering the associated structure and personnel), as well as to protect connected electrical systems from damage associated with fault currents high.
protection against earth faults. under normal circumstances, power system currents do not flow over the building grounding system. However, if a live conductor protected by the circuit breaker is inadvertently connected to earth, the load current that would normally return to the circuit breaker via the neutral conductor of the system follows a parallel path on the building earth system. the group fault switch mechanism (gfci) in the circuit breaker detects this current imbalance and immediately opens the circuit breaker, thereby de-energizing the circuit. a device similar to this is commonly used in residential and commercial receptacles for disconnecting power from the connected load if the gfci mechanism detects a current imbalance between the hot contact and the neutral contact on the receptacle, indicating that the equipment connected to the receptacle has encountered an internal fault connecting its live part to the ground, this can avoid serious electrical shock to people who come into contact with live parts of the connected equipment.
isolation. Although a circuit breaker is designed to trigger automatically if a system fault (three-phase, two-phase, phase-to-earth) generates fault currents of sufficient magnitude and duration, the circuit breaker handle can also be activated / deactivated manually. pretty much like a power switch. although most circuit breakers are not listed for the fact that the trip lever is commonly used as an on / off switch. it is designed to be used to isolate the associated circuit and the equipment it provides for maintenance. The circuit breakers are designed with integral provisions to accept a locking device to secure the circuit breaker in the off position to prevent it from being ignited by unauthorized personnel. this is part of the lock-and-lock process used to protect workers from electrical hazards when working on electrical equipment.
