I have written quite a bot of material on Ground loop problems and how to get rid of them. The ground loop related problems are often caused by small ground potential differences between different electrical outlets. Typically those ground potential differences are few volts or less.
Not your fault article by Howard Johnson published in EDN magazine describes situations where those ground potential differences can raise to much higher voltages, up to tens of volts.
The green safety wire, or “third wire,” merely connects the metallic chassis of each product to earth at the ac power entrance. Under ideal, no-fault conditions, the green safety wire carries no current. Based on this an inexperienced designer might therefore conclude that the green wires form a single-point-ground reference system that provides a consistent voltage reference between different ac-powered products.
If live wire during some fault situation touches the metallic chassis, a large fault current back to the power source through the ground wire. The fault current trips the circuit breaker, shutting off power and possibly saving the life. The power shutoff normally takes from a small fraction of second up to few seconds depending on the way the circuit is protected. As the huge fault current surges (up to hundreds of amperes) through the green wire, other devices connected to adjacent outlets can experience voltage differences as large as 60V rms in 120V AC system used in USA. The voltages can be even higher on 230V AC system used in Europe (in theory up to 115V AC, in practice normally less than 70V).
This kind of huge voltage differences between equipment can fry the communications interface on interconnected devices because it is normally outside the operating voltage range most normal interconnection systems can sustain (RS-232, RS-422, RS-485). The thin ground connection on the interconnection cable does not much to reduce the surge those devices get. If you want to design reliably working electronics, it would be better if you design gear that can sustain such extraordinary voltages without damage. If your devices can’t sustain those voltages, it would be better if the equipment would be permanently connected to a common outlet or power strip.
Suitable technologies that can easily sustain 60V or more voltage between devices are Ethernet on UTP wiring (transformer isolated), fiber-based optical links, free space optical communications and wireless RF communications. Traditional RS-232 or RS-485 or RS-422 can be made to withstand this voltage if you take case that the equipment on one of the ends of the communications link or both of them have the communications port electrically isolated (usually uses optioisolators) from the equipment case.
19 Comments
unreply says:
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sondownder says:
“Traditional RS-232 or RS-485 or RS-422 can be made to withstand this voltage if you take case that the equipment on one of the ends of the communications link or both of them have the communications port electrically isolated (usually uses optioisolators) from the equipment case.”
Where else can I read about it?
tomi says:
In data communications, the primary application for optical isolation is in a point-to-point data circuit that covers a distance of several hundred feet or more. Because the connected devices are presumably on different power circuits, a ground potential difference likely exists between them. When such a condition exists, the voltage of “ground” can be different, sometimes by several hundred volts.
Where a ground potential difference exists, a phenomenon called ground looping can occur. In this phenomenon, current will flow along the data line in an effort to equalize the ground potential between the connected devices. Ground looping can, at the very least, severely garble communications–if not damage hardware!
Optical isolation solves the problem of ground looping by effectively lifting the connection between the data line and “ground” at either end of the line. If an optically coupled connection exists at each end, the data traffic “floats” above the volatility of ground potential differences.
If the voltage potential is large enough, your equipment will not be able to handle the excess voltage, and one of your ports will be damaged. Even small ground loop voltages cause transmission errors with data signals riding on top of the ground loop current. At worst, ground loops are a long-term condition that can slowly heat, and even cook your circuits.
Source: http://www.usconverters.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=20&chapter=0
Some links
http://www.usconverters.com/index.php?main_page=page&id=20&chapter=0
http://www.bb-elec.com/productsubcat.asp?MainCategoryId=4&Trail=2&TrailType=Top
http://www.digi.com/products/serialservers/digiconnectes.jsp#overview
http://www.moxa.com/product/tcc-82.htm
http://www.moxa.com/product/tcc-100.htm
http://www.datasheetarchive.com/RS232%20isolation-datasheet.html
http://www.supplyframe.com/partsearchservlet/partnerWormhole.action?id=2835057&partnerName=DSA
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Grounding issues and minimizing EMI « Tomi Engdahl’s ePanorama blog says:
[...] necessary safety functions. Grounding also have other functions in some applications (for example work as signal ground reference) but the safety should not be compromised in any [...]
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Intersil
Over-Voltage Protection for RS-485 Bus Node
http://www.intersil.com/content/dam/Intersil/whitepapers/interface/overvoltage-protection-rs485-bus-nodes.pdf
Robustness and reliability have made RS-485 the industrial workhorse over the past 40 years. Its large
differential signal swing of 1.5V minimum and reliable operation over a wide common-mode voltage range of -7V to +12V have catapulted the RS-485’s widespread deployment. Initially used as a communication network in laboratory instrumentation, RS-485 has spread to control networks in industrial and building automation, PLC networks on the factory floor, process control, commercial heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, seismic networks, traffic monitoring systems, and alarm indication systems in oil rigs, coal mines and the petro-chemical industry.
this white paper focuses on: RS-485 transceiver protection against large over-voltages.
The 24V and 48V DC supplies in industrial and telecom systems are commonly distributed through the same conduits as the data lines of an RS-485 network.
If a DC supply shares the same connector or screw terminal block with the data lines of a
n adjacent bus node circuit, miss-wiring faults can occur that connect one or more supply conductors with the transceiver bus terminals.
Another failure cause is the layout of the conduit. Sharp bends often violate the minimum cable radius
specified for data and supply cables. Over time, the increased mechanical pressure on the cable will cause a break in the insulation, causing shorts between power and data lines.
Engineers new to over-voltage protection often assume that adding external transient voltage suppressors (TVS) to a non-fault protected, standard transceiver ensures protection against short-and long-term over-voltages.
to protect your bus nodes against the wide range of over-voltages, you need fault-protected transceivers, such as Intersil’s ISL3245xE family. These transceivers provide protection against DC over-voltages of up to ±60V and transient over -voltages of up to ±80V.
Occasionally the question arises: Why not use a non-fault protected, standard transceiver and a few discrete low-cost transistors with sufficient high voltage breakdown for over-voltage protection?
The answer is simple: A discrete solution adds more cost and development time, and it consumes more space than a fault-protected transceiver.
Fault-protected transceivers with common-mode ranges wider than specified in the RS-485 standard require double fold-back current limiting within the driver stage.
current limiting scheme ensures that the output current never exceeds the RS-485 specification, even at the common modeand fault condition voltage range extremes
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Tomi Engdahl says:
In power cables with twisted PE conductors a common mode voltage is induced by currents in the
phase conductors. This is valid even in the case of balanced currents and to the fact that the PE
conductor has a certain asymmetry with respect to the phase conductors resulting in a net magnetic
°ux through the loop built up by the PE conductor and structures of the equipotential bonding
system. The amplitude of the induced voltage depends strongly on the loop length but only slightly
on the loop width and on cable parameters such as twist length or conductor cross-section. Hence
a mutual inductance per unit length can be derived to express the induced voltage. It is in the
range of about 70{100 nH/m and can be used to estimate induced common mode currents.
UPE = 2¼fIMNET (7)
with MNET as the net mutual inductance derived from the superposition of the individual mutual
inductances. According to this relation a mutual inductance M0N
ET = 70 nH per meter length
results when the induced voltage UPE is considered as derived above. The mutual inductance
is expected to depend on several cable parameters.
It shall be mentioned that this phenomenon takes place for cables with twisted PE conductors
only. It does not exist in the case of cables with concentric PE conductors which therefore should
preferably be used when low magnetic stray fields are required.
Source:
Inductive Coupling between Wires in Cables with a Grounded Conductor
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266065334_Inductive_Coupling_between_Wires_in_Cables_with_a_Grounded_Conductor
Tomi Engdahl says:
Understanding Rise of Earth Potential
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziOKoWEIDH8
AC substation grounding for safety
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXtA5rxJXGA
Tomi Engdahl says:
Earth Terminal Voltage Drop TN-C-S
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iozyjrPmY7U
How the earth terminal on a TN-C-S supply can be at a different voltage to the true Earth.
As the neutral and earth conductor are combined outside the installation, current in the neutral causes a voltage drop, which results in the earth terminal having a different potential (voltage) to the true Earth outside.
tomi says:
All the news channels ate full of news related to Michael Jackson.
I see no point in blogging about Michael Jackson here.