Abstract:
New trends in high voltage insulation materials have resulted in frequent use of a combination of glass reinforced fibers and organic outer materials as protection covering against weather. Introduction of polymeric insulators is one product of this trend. With all parameters known to good compared to ceramic insulation products, one thing is still not fully resolved that is the decay life of organic material used for example silicon rubber or EPDM used in polymeric insulators. To resolve this long term aging under natural and simulating natural environment of each region in the world is going on and to start the same in Pakistan, this paper represents the results of multi-stress accelerated aging simulating the natural environmental conditions. The insulators were aged simulating the environment of five different regions of Pakistan with an average acceleration factor of 25.6, so the six month laboratory study is equivalent to 12.67 years of field experience. The work presented here is particularly very useful for promoting the polymeric insulator product in Pakistan. The study included HTV silicone containing silica and ATH in the form of rod, plate and assembled insulator as the samples. Results were collected using techniques like Visual Observations, ATR (Attenuated Total Reflection) FTIR, SEM, Hydrophobicity and leakage current monitoring and collectively a degradation of less than 20 % was observed.
Page(s):
297-310
DOI:
DOI not available
Published:
Journal: Mehran University Research Journal of Engineering and Technology, Volume: 26, Issue: 4, Year: 2007