Direct Current Inclined Plane Testing on Silicone Rubber Composites Reinforced with Silica Nano Particles

Abstract

Polymer insulators traditionally used in HVAC (High Voltage Alternating Current) are used in HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) transmission lines. For these polymer insulators, silicone insulating rubber, based on Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), is used in industry to manufacture high voltage insulators for power lines. Silicone rubber material ages due to pollution and environmental factors such as UV (ultraviolet light), rain, and temperature. Moreover, no international standard is available to standardize its functional characteristics to ensure its best performance in HVDC regime. Standards usually define the testing procedures to measure the resistance of the materials to these conditions. One of the tests used to evaluate the performance in AC (alternating current) of the housing material of polymeric insulators is the inclined plane test (IPT). This test has the purpose of assessing the tracking and erosion resistance of housing materials. However, for the IPT, no consensus is reached yet for this testing in Direct Current (DC) voltage. In addition, there are no indications whether the formulations that have been successfully used for HVAC work fine; also, in HVDC regime, or not. In this paper, an investigation of the tracking and erosion resistance under positive DC IPT is presented. In this way, the study was carried out on skirts of an HVAC commercial insulator and samples of a new outstanding composite silicone rubber formulation filled with micro and nano particles. The results show that HVAC silicone rubber formulations could not be suitable for HVDC applications under highly polluted conditions. In the case of the new enhanced composite, it is shown how nano particles used in this material significantly enhance the performance during DC tracking and erosion testing well above other materials tested in previous works. Also, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) of the composites is used to correlate thermal stability with the DC IPT performance.