Hello,

because Andreas wrote a very good point into the comments to my last blog, I'd like to quote this completely. Seems, that something didn't became clear, I hope this will help now:

Andreas

I do compliance testing too. We have a "small" lab where i work with
the the basic equipment to do burst, surge, ESD, conducted emission and
conducted immunity tests, among others.

It is nice to see that others manage to burn out circuits with these fun tools too. :)

I'll try to help you a little bit with explaining the burst test. What you describe with "body charging up to a high voltage" does have nothing to do with the surge or burst test. Electrostatic discharge (IEC 61000-4-2) is a separate test with much higher voltages than burst or surge (usually 8kV for compliance, we test at 15kV where i work). The capacity and discharge resistor in the ESD test equipment are specifically modelled after the human body.

The burst test (IEC 61000-4-4) is more geared towards testing the immunity of your circuit against noise on the mains network. The signal is modelled roughly like the noise you can get from switching large loads (motors, heaters,...) on and off near your equipment. This generates a burst (like a packet) of high frequency voltage peaks usually in the region of 0.5-2kV amplitude. The burst test basically generates a controlled packet of these peaks, and your equipment gets bombarded with a lot of them for a given test period (5kHz or 100kHz repetition, usually for 1min per polarity).

Surge test (IEC 61000-4-5), as you have explained a bit better, is simulating the effect of a lightning striking the mains network at or near your equipment. This will usually result in a single fast (1.2us rise time at open circuit), high energy impulse (test voltages usually go to 2-4kV).
I hope this helps to understand the concept and idea behind these two tests a bit better.

Thanks a lot, Andreas