Electric field analysis along pin-plane electrodes near the contaminated dielectric surface using FEM
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Date
2017-06
Authors
Nurin Nadzrah Mohd Shariff
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Abstract
SiR and EPDM are polymeric material that is often used as outdoor insulating material and both material has different properties that is needed to produce good outdoor insulator. Therefore, SiR and EPDM are blended together to form composite material that combined both of their superior properties. Nanofillers are also added in order to further develop the insulating material. However, the moisture of contamination on insulator surface causes increased conductivity and leakage current thus producing dry band. This formation of the dry band influences the electric field distribution along the insulator and can result to partial arc and flashover. Hence, in this work, the electric field along pin-plane electrodes near the contaminated dielectric surface is simulated and analysed using finite element analysis software, Comsol Multiphysics. The electrodes and insulating surface is modelled according to IEC 60587 standard. Dry band length of 5 mm, 15 mm, 30 mm and 40 mm is modelled to analyse the relationship of electric field distribution against dry band length. In the simulation, the severity of the contamination is presented by the conductivity of the material. Therefore, the conductivity is varied from 0.0175 S/m, 0.0500 S/m, 0.0850 S/m and 0.1500 S/m to represent light, medium, heavy and very heavy contamination, respectively. All of the model is then simulated with different volume percent of nanofiller, which are 1%, 2% and 5%. The simulation results revealed that narrower dry band create higher magnitude of electric field at the end of contamination. It is also found that insulator with 5 vol% of alumina nanofiller has the lowest electric field when compared at the end of contamination but is the highest when it is compared at the ground electrode. Other than that, it is also found that the severity of contamination is not causing any significant increase in electric field as the conductivity of contamination is not greatly varied.