A survey on recent development of asymmetrical three-phase short circuit faults computation in power systems

Asymmetrical three-phase short circuit faults occur more often than symmetrical three-phase short circuits faults. The asymmetrical three-phase short circuit faults can be line-to-line faults, double line-to-earth faults or line-to-earth faults. Symmetric components technique and computer methods like time-domain fault analysis as well as quasi steady-state fault analysis are the main traditional methods found in the literature for computing the faults. Some recent software like ETAP (Electrical Transient Analysis Program), Easy-Power and Matlab can also assist in predicting, calculating and generating signals (plotting) of short circuit faults. However, the computation of asymmetrical three-phase short circuit faults in the real world often involves the presence of noise, non-linearity, uncertain and dynamic environments. These various conditions interfere with the evaluation processes of these methods and software tools. This paper presents a survey of comprehensive investigation and analysis of the various algorithms, computer applications and software used to compute asymmetrical three-phase short circuit faults. Various methods and algorithms employ different levels of abstraction. Their strengths and weaknesses are explored in depth and various suggestions are given respectively.