A general stochastic approach to partial discharge processes

In this investigation a common framework for the physical description of partial discharge (PD) phenomena is presented that holds for internal discharges as well as for surface and corona discharges. Within this framework a PD process is viewed as a random point process. It is shown that this point process can be described by only one conditional probability distribution which can be calculated from few basic physical properties of the discharge physics. From this central distribution measurable quantities like the time-of-occurrence probability p(t) or the so-called Phase-Resolved-Partial-Discharge (PRPD) patterns can be easily derived. For all of the three discharge types (internal, surface, corona) examples are presented that demonstrate the applicability of the model.