Due to increasingly stringent operational requirements, protective devices must be continuously improved while reducing manufacturing costs. One of the most popular protective devices in recent times are residual current circuit breakers with overcurrent protection, which combine the operation of circuit breakers and residual current circuit breakers. This paper presents a discussion of the existing design and the preparation of an improved switching mechanism design using numerical analysis, where we used multybody dynamics to simulate the switch-on and switch-off of both mechanism designs. From the switch-off simulations, we determined the tripping forces and tripping times. This is followed by an analysis of physical samples, in which we checked out the impact of the modifications in real-life conditions through the obtained tripping forces, tripping times and from the temperature test. A high-speed camera was used to support the analysis. The results of the analysis showed that, in terms of tripping forces and tripping times, the modification of the design improved the performance of the mechanism. The test also showed that the temperature resistance of the mechanism had improved.
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