Surface Erosion Studies on Polymer Insulators Used for High Voltage Transmission
B. S. Reddy, A. R. Verma, and D. S. Prasad
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, India
Abstract- Polymeric/silicon rubber insulators are being widely used in high voltage transmission and distribution systems due to their advantageous over the conventional porcelain or glass insulators. The polymeric insulators being organic in nature experience surface degradation from environment as well as tracking, erosion, corona, dry-band arcing etc, due to continuous electric stress. The present work reports the results of tracking and erosion study conducted on commercially used silicon rubber insulators for different acidic contamination conditions. A comparison is made for both high temperature vulcanized rubber (HTV) and liquid silicon rubber LSR) insulating materials used for high voltage transmission.
Keywords-Surface erosion, tracking, polymer insulators, contamination, FTIR, SEM