Physics Spl

Hi,
Fuse is an electrical and electronics device it's a low resistance resistor works as a sacrificial device to provide the protection to source or load circuit when current exceeds the certain limit.
Its main components are metal wire or strip which will be melted when current exceeds the certain limit. Fuse is a alternative to circuit breaker.
An electrical fuse is a simple device used to interrupt an electrical circuit during over current condition due to short circuit and/or overload. An electrical fuse operates on the principle of heating effect of electric current. During normal operating condition, the current flowing through the fusing element is such that the rate of heat production in the fuse element is nearly equal to the rate of heat dissipation from the fuse element and thereby they are will be no considerable increase of temperature of that fuse element. But if current through the fuse element crosses certain predetermined value, the rate of production of heat is no longer equal to the rate of dissipation of heat and as a result there will be a rapid increase of temperature of the fuse element and very soon it reaches to the melting point of the fuse element.
Fuses can be divided into two main categories according to the type of input supply voltage.
AC fuses
DC fuses
AC and DC Fuses
There is a little difference between AC and DC Fuses used in the AC and DC Systems.
In a DC system, when the metallic wire Melts because of the heat generated by the over current, then Arc is produced and it is very difficult to extinct this arc because of DC constant value. So in order to minimize the fuse arcing, DC fuse are little bigger than an AC fuse which increase the distance between the electrodes to reduce the arc in the Fuse. On the other hand, I.e. in the AC system, voltage with 60Hz or 50Hz frequency changes it amplitude from zero to 60 times every second, so arc can be extinct easily as compared to DC. Therefore, AC fuses are little bit small in sizes as compared to DC fuses.
Fuses can also be categorized based on one time or multiple Operations.
1) One time use only Fuse 2) Resettable Fuses
All the best.