Fusing Currents in Traces - UltraCAD

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Fusing Currents in Traces Douglas Brooks, PhD President, UltraCAD Design, Inc. with Dr. Johannes Adam President, ADAM Research Copyright, 2015 (Revision 1, July, 2015) (See Note 8) For a complete analysis of trace and via Currents and temperatures, see Brooks and Adam, PCB trace and Via Currents and Temperatures: The Complete Analysis, Available at , At the end of a seminar one of the authors was leading one day, a participant asked the following question: If there is a catastrophic failure of my system, a certain 1 Oz. trace will carry 40 Amps. I need it to carry that for 1 second while the system shuts down in a controlled manner. What size trace do I need? The first person usually credited with exploring this type of problem was Sir W. H. Preece back in the 1880 s. He was then a consulting engineer for the British General Post Office.

When sufficient heat is applied to a copper trace (or indeed, any material) to melt the trace, there are two times that need to be considered.

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