Study on tracking time of epoxy resin insulating material under artificial accelerated aging

An insulator installation in tropical climate and high rainfall areas could cause a problem. Humidity and rain take an essential role in filling insulator wet surface which produces contaminant and leakage current flowing on it. Besides, continuous ultraviolet radiation will accelerate the aging and degradation process on the insulator surface which also make electrical current easy to flow. This research discussed the effects of ultraviolet radiation and fly ash addition as a filler material toward contact angle, tracking time, and the average leakage current value of high voltage insulation of epoxy resin materials. This research was done on a laboratory scale using epoxy resin polymer materials (DGEBA and MPDA) mixed with silicone rubber and fly ash with filler composition variation of 20%, 30%, and 40%. Samples were flowed by rainwater contaminant with conductivity of 196 μS/cm, NH4Cl with resistivity of 3,95 ± 0,05 Ωm and it also were already given ultraviolet radiation in 0, 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours. Leakage current values was obtained by conducting several tests using Inclined-Plane Tracking method (IEC standard 587 : 1984) and high voltage injection of 3.5 kV. The results indicated that filler material composition of epoxy resin and ultraviolet radiation completely affected the contact angle magnitude, the average of leakage current value, and the tracking time needed. From the whole parameter measured, the data of before and after treatments of ultraviolet radiation showed that RTV23 sample was the best sample compared to RTV22 and RTV24.