Development of Experimental Database for High Energy Arcing Faults (HEAF) in Electrical Equipment of Nuclear Power Plants

High energy arcing faults (HEAF) are becoming more common in aged electrical equipment as nuclear power plants age. The fire and potential damage caused by HEAF are often not considered in existing nuclear safety regulations, so further research is needed. The international joint study from the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been conducting the HEAF experiments to investigate HEAF phenomena for electrical systems in nuclear power plants. To support effective nuclear safety regulation, a comprehensive database is essential for systematically categorizing and organizing the complex and invaluable HEAF experimental data. Therefore, we analyzed the HEAF experimental reports to identify key attributes and proposed an effective framework for HEAF database. The HEAF Project Phase-2 report suggests that HEAF experimental data have unique characteristics that differ from typical data, highlighting the need for a specialized database. The proposed HEAF experimental database, implemented with Obsidian software, features a four-layer structure for independent data management and provides intuitive linkages among experimental data, enabling users to analyze and query HEAF results without deep database knowledge.