Lifetime Estimation Based on Surface Degradation and Characterization of HTV Silicone-rubber Based Composites for HVAC and HVDC Transmission

In this paper, six different types of silicone rubber-based composites were investigated for applications in high voltage insulation through multi-stress accelerated aging conducted for a period of 5000 h both under AC and DC voltages. The main goal of this study was lifetime prediction of HTV-SR based composites at a typical multi-stress aging conditions. Several diagnostic techniques such as hydrophobicity assessment, leakage current measurement and FTIR were incorporated to assess the aging. As an outcome of this investigation, all the five hybrid samples were found as quite resistant to aging while the neat sample was comparatively, less resistant to the aging. Overall, among the studied samples, TS2 and TS4 appeared to have shown the highest resistance to aging giving a service life of 43.2 and 42 years, respectively under AC aging. Under DC stress the order of merit of investigated samples was identical to that of AC stress but having marginally less life spans.