Study On IEC Safety Tests On Electronic Ballast For Fluorescent Lamps

From the view of safety test, various dangers and classifications in electrical products are introduced. The IEC/EN safety test standards for electronic ballast for fluorescent lamp, IEC/EN 61347-1 & 61347-2-3 are studied. Meanwhile, the IEC/EN safety test standards for luminaire are introduced because some safety requirements on electronic ballast are covered in this standards and electronic ballast will be incorporated in luminaire for safety evaluation. So, electronic ballast must comply with relevant requirements in luminaire standards which means it can't endanger luminaire.To get deep and right understanding on IEC/EN safety standards, the basic knowledge on principles of electronic ballast is necessary. From the introductions of fluorescent tube discharge process, its negative resistance characteristic, common ballast methods to the basic principles are introduced in this article.As its end-application in luminaire, the requirements of thermal test under normal and abnormal conditions were introduced according to relevant parts of IEC/EN 60598-1.Finally, based on a test example, problems and solutions in safety tests and how to design electronic ballast to comply with safety certification requirements are proposed in details, such as component selection, pre-heating circuit design, fault analysis, protection against abnormal conditions etc.. Meanwhile, some key components concerned in safety tests, such as capacitor, inductor, fuse, magnet core, PTC are introduced too.