Partial discharge characteristics of natural rubber blends with inorganic nanofiller as electrical insulating material

Abstract

In electrical engineering, electrical discharge ca n occur in gaseous, liquid or solid insulating medium. Localized dielectric breakdown t hat occur at a small portion of a solid or fluid electrical insulation under high voltage stress is called partial discharge (PD). This phenomenon can cause the material to breakdown if there is no prop er action taken. Usually it begins within voids, cracks, or inclusions within a solid dielectric, at conductor-dielectric interfaces within solid and i n bubbles within liquid dielectrics. In order to modi fy electrical properties of the original structure then nanocomposite need to be introduced. Nanocompo site is the original structure that has been inserted by nano component (nanofiller) such as sil icone dioxide and titanium dioxide. Nanocomposites are also found in nature, for exampl e in the structure of the abalone shell and bone. By adding nano component inside the original compon ent, it can change the mechanical and electric properties. In this study, PD characteristics of po lymer-natural rubber blends nanocomposite have been investigated. The samples of nanocomposites we re developed by using extrusion method. The high voltage is applied at the electrode arrangemen t of the test sample. The signals of partial discharges are detected by CIGRE Method II and RC d etector and the signals are transferred to the personal computer using LabView TM software. The result from the software is analyzed to find out the PD characteristics. The results revealed that t he highest PD numbers are compositions with no filler while the lowest PD numbers come from sample that use 4% SiO 2 as its nanofiller. The physical morphology observation is also conducted t o investigate the degradation of the samples.