Corona resistance of epoxy nanocomposites: experimental results and modeling

Epoxy composites with micro, nano and micro + nano silica fillers have been evaluated for their resistance to corona using point plane electrodes. The experiments were conducted for 500 h and the surface erosion was measured after every 100 h using a surface profilometer. The results show significant improvement in corona resistance of micro+nanofilled samples and nanofilled samples when compared with the microfilled samples and unfilled materials respectively. The results emphasize the importance of good filler dispersion. A model to map the degradation path in the filled and unfilled samples was developed using Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm. Reasonable agreement between the length of degradation path and the corona resistance in samples containing both micro + nanofillers has been demonstrated.