A study on the effect of inorganic fillers on the dry-band arcing erosion of silicone rubber composites

This paper investigates the erosion of silicone rubber composites filled with various fillers. The fillers under study are alumina tri-hydrate, magnesium hydroxide and silica. The inclined plane tracking and erosion test was used to compare the erosion of the composite materials at 50 wt% filler level at 4.5 kV. Simultaneous thermogravimetric and differential thermal analyses are reported which shows various mechanisms by which the fillers suppress dry-band arcing erosion. The effect of water of hydration in the alumina tri-hydrate and magnesium hydroxide is investigated and its effect on the suppression of the dry-band arcing erosion is reported for the composites filled with alumina tri-hydrate and magnesium hydroxide.