Effect of BN size on arc ablation characteristics of PTFE material

To satisfy the rapid development of energy requirements, power transmission with higher voltage must be adopted. The large improvement in transmission voltage needs more excellent power equipment and better materials to meet its insulation requirement. PTFE nozzle used in high voltage circuit breaker faces the issue of arc ablation, and thus superior performance nozzles are urgently needed. In this paper, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE)/boron nitride (BN) micro sheet composites (PTFE/BN) are prepared to study the relationship of BN size and arc ablation characteristics. The thermal transport performance of PTFE/BN composites increases with BN sizes and the highest value has improved by 86.44% compared with that of neat PTFE when PTFE is filled with 3 μm BN. Moreover, PTFE/BN composites indicate higher spectral reflectance properties than that of neat PTFE when the light wavelength is longer than 300 nm. The arc ablation test results show that the PTFE/BN composites present better arc ablation resistance performance, which gets more and more excellent with increase of BN size. It is considered that the increase in thermal transport performance makes the heat form the high temperature arc conduct more quickly and then reduce the heat accumulation on the specimen surface, and thus the arc ablation resistance performance is improved.