Electric field modelling of polymer nanocomposites under various nanoparticles distributions

Abstract

High voltage insulators play an important role in electrical power transmission systems. The insulators not only function as dielectric materials, but also need to meet other specifications, which includes mechanical, thermal and economic requirements. Most of the electrical insulators are made of glasses, porcelains and ceramics, but the insulators may fail to operate under large electrical fields due to electrical breakdown. Recently, nanocomposites have been developed as a novel insulation system that provide significantly improved electrical, thermal, mechanical and chemical properties. In terms of dielectric properties, the use of nanofillers leads to a high volume fraction of the interaction zones between the particles and polymer matrix called interphase. However, many studies of nanocomposites have assumed that nanofillers are homogeneously dispersed and their interphases are uniform in size. With the increasing availability and reducing cost of computers, numerical techniques in Finite Element Method Magnetics (FEMM) 4.2 software have become one of the popular tools for calculating electrical field distribution. To carry out a simulation study on the effect of nanoparticle interphase in polymer nanocomposites, the current work has considered an interphase model based on polymer and nanoparticle with fixed permittivity. To determine the effects of electric field distribution in relation to the non-homogeneous nanoparticle dispersion, changes in the models have been determined by varying nanoparticles size, the interphase thickness, the permittivity values within interphase and the position of nanoparticles.