Transient Electric and Thermal Fields in a HVDC cable

Polymeric insulation is being widely used in HVDC cables owing to its several advantages. The performance of a HVDC cable during transients, such as sudden switching and polarity reversal etc., will not be the same as in steady state. In this work the design performance of a HVDC cable has been evaluated. During transient periods the cable insulation suffers from high electro-thermal stress. In this paper, an electro-thermal model has been considered for simulation. The nonlinear DC conductivity is experimentally measured and incorporated in the model to analyze exact performance of cable as per Cigré standard TB 496. The electric field, temperature distribution and insulation leakage current have been analyzed. Peak electric field and field enhancement factors are obtained.