Electrostatic Measurement Application in Lighting Industry

    Electrostatic discharge may occur from personnel to object or object to object, and it will cause the failure of electric and electronic devices. So, the test of electrostatic discharge is widely applied in the worldwide. The ESD Generator (ESD Simulator，ESD Gun) is an important tool for the EMC test and ESD immunity test, the test purpose is to check if the EUT can work under the electrostatic discharge.

    There are two methods for this test: one is contact discharge which the pole of ESD generator contact with EUT and the discharge is actuated by the discharge switch within the generator. The other is air discharge, charged electrode of test generator is moved towards the EUT and until it touches the EUT. Applied in lighting industry, like EN61547-2009 clause 5.2 mentioned that contact discharge is preferred test method, twenty discharges (10 with positive and 10 with negative polarity) shall be applied on each accessible metallic part of the enclosure （terminal are excluded）. Air discharges shall be used where contact discharge cannot be applied.

    According to IEC61000-4-2, both air discharge and contact discharge have 5 degrees, the detail as table 1, among them, class x is open class. Combine with lighting industry, CE is a passport for the products to enter into Europe countries, and electrostatic discharge is a part of CE test. According to EN61547-2009 standard, the lighting device must meet the requirements of class 2 (contact discharge) and class 3 (air discharge), like table 2. The test result can be classified by 4 degrees: Normal performance within limits specified by the manufacturer, requestor or purchaser. 2) Temporary loss of function or degradation of performance which ceases after the disturbance ceases, and from which the equipment under test recovers its normal performance, without operator intervention. 3) Temporary loss of function or degradation of performance, the correction of which requires operator intervention. 4) Loss of function or degradation of performance which is not recoverable, owing to damage to hardware or software, or loss of data.

Table 1-Test Level

Tale 2-Electronstatic discharge-Test levels at enclosure port

Electrostatic discharge immunity test is to make common criteria to evaluate the performance of electric and electronic equipments. According to this criterion, Lisun Group developed the ESD61000-2 and ESD61000-2A electrostatic discharge generator; the max output voltage can reach 30KV, completely meet the requirements of EN/IEC61000-4-2 and GB/T17626.2. ESD series equipments are not only applied to lighting industries, and also widely applied to other electronic equipments.