Study on glaze electrical erosion characteristics of porcelain post insulator by using inclined plane and graphite-layer-based method

In order to study the effect of glaze erosion on the performance of porcelain post insulator, an inclined plane (IP) test similar to IEC 60587 standard was conducted on a cylindrical insulator sample under laboratory conditions for ac voltage, and a new test method, called graphite-layer-based glaze erosion test was proposed in this paper and performed on the sheds of a 40.5 kV post insulator. The experimental details of the graphite-layer-based glaze erosion test was introduced, the technical points of which are coating a graphite layer on the surface of the shed using a brush mold which contains multiple hollowed-out rhombic grids, and arranging high voltage electrode at shed root and grounded electrode at shed edge respectively at both ends of the graphite layer, so as to form continuous and stable surface arcing under ac voltage and therefore achieve desired glaze electrical erosion effect. The graphite layer is a uniform viscous mixture made up with flake graphite and liquid glue according to a quality ratio of 1:1.2. The arcing process, arc current characteristics, surface temperature, and glaze erosion appearance were analyzed. Leakage current under power frequency voltage and flashover voltage of the eroded cylindrical insulator by IP test were measured, while porosity test and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) tests were conducted on samples taken from the sheds after graphite-layer-based glaze erosion test. The results indicate that glaze erosion will decrease both electrical and mechanical performance of the porcelain post insulator. The new test method proposed in this paper has been proved to be effective for glaze erosion test and consumes much less time compared with IP test, which provides a new idea for accelerated tracking and erosion test of glaze and porcelain materials so as to study the aging characteristics of porcelain insulators.