Abstract:The failure detection of the energy storage capacitor is an important issue to be solved in permanent magnetic actuator for vacuum switch. Based on the operating principle of permanent magnetic mechanism, the degradation mechanism of the energy storage capacitor (electrolytic capacitor) and equivalent circuit model were studied. The equivalent series resistance (RESR) and capacitance (C) values were selected as feature parameters to identify the faults. An assessment method was proposed by introducing the system identification theory. Furthermore, the least squares support vector machine (LS SVM) algorithm was used to predict the values of RESR and C, then the capacitor’s condition changes could be obtained and analyzed. The simulation experiments show the effectiveness of this assessment and prediction method.