Arc fault detection and appliances classification in AC home electrical networks using recurrence quantification plots and image analysis

This paper presents a method for the detection of series arc faults in electrical circuits, which has been developed starting from the recurrence quantification plots that allow to quantify the periodic behavior of time-series and to analyze the recurrences of a dynamical system presented by its phase space trajectory. Starting from this, the authors have found that it is possible to exploit recurrence quantification plots by using the gray-level co-occurrence matrix from which the extracted textural image features represent a proper set of indicators for suitably detecting arc faults. The database of this research is collected from 13 different types of load according to IEC 62606 standard. The proposed method's effectiveness is shown by means of experimental tests, which were carried out in both arcing and non-arcing conditions and in the presence of different loads.