As an important equipment of H VDC transmission the reliability and fault tolerance of thyristor converter valve are closely related to the safe and reliable operation of HVDC transmission project.Short circuit fault is one of the most serious faults that may occur in thyristor converter valve.This paper researches the test requirements of short circuit fault in relevant standards and analyzes the typical fault characteristics of thyristor converter valve for HVDC transmission.This paper introduces two kinds of fault current test methods based on short-circuit generator and capacitor bank as the short-circuit test power supply and analyzes their advantages and disadvantages in terms of fault current thermal effect equivalence and fault current test voltage equivalence.