Mikhail Golovkov

 Arc Testing is the focus of my technical interest and has been my passion during last nine or so years while with KEMA and ArcWear. I did relatively little testing while with KEMA (they never transitioned from test equipment and software development to full scale commercial testing). But, eight subsequent years of arc testing at Kinectrics as private contractor and later as an ArcWear employee immersed me in the arc testing experience. I am well versed in this highly specialized discipline, including:

•  commercial and research arc testing
• drafting new standards for arc test methods for arc blankets and gloves within ASTM
• actively working in five Maintenance (MT) and Project (PT) Teams and Work Group (WG) 15 of Technical Committee (TC) 78 for an international IEC arc test standardization
• arc flash calculations for large Toyota assembly plant in KY
• some arc flash accident investigation
• research papers authorship for conferences and magazines
• presentations at several conferences – winner of the Best Paper and Best Presentation awards at consecutive IEEE ESW-13,14 conferences

Since leaving ArcWear I remain focused on electric arc research and commercial testing. Having an electro-physics engineering background, I started my own firm realizing that there are still some “grey” areas in arc behavior and material reaction to different types of arc exposure. I want to shine some light on these.

There is a clear need and a room for improvement in our existing test methods as testing becomes really international with new commercial labs coming on-line in Spain and Russia during the last three-four years. Further, there is a need to create new test method(s) to address the specific hazards of ejected arc and arc-in-a-box. ASTM has established a task force on plasma test, but there is not much test data yet.    

Development of new test methods requires research. I started such research this fall (2014) and require industry funding to continue the effort. Contact me if you are interested in joining this effort intellectually and financially. Together we can do more in a shorter time.