Surface discharge characteristics of polymer-nanocomposite material as electrical insulation

Abstract

Surface discharge is electrical discharges that normally happens on the surface of insulators and also cause the failure in electrical insulation if not taken action. On the high voltage stress, the surface discharges cause deterioration of insulating materials. The experimental was carried out to investigate the surface discharge characteristics on HDPE as insulating materials. The IEC (b) electrode configuration had been used to investigate the surface discharge phenomenon with the different type of filler under the open chamber and close chamber. In this experiment, the polymer had been selected are high density polyethylene (HDPE) with different filler which are microsilica and nanosilica. The effect of humidity will be measured inside and outside the chamber. The surface discharge characteristics observed through surface morphology which is examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Moreover, it is also determined by measuring the average magnitude of surface discharges intensity on the Picoscope6 software as the digital oscilloscope. The data analysis was done to compare the surface discharge characteristics between those samples. After experiment was done, we observed the content of filler inside the sample not significantly affected on the surface discharges activities. The surface roughness that occur on the sample, might caused by the surface conductivity. When the surface conductivity of polymeric material increase the discharges magnitude intensity also increase. This lead to severe surface degradation on the sample.