Investigation on electrical treeing characteristics of XLPE containing ZnO nano-filler

In this paper, the electrical tree characteristic of crosslink polyethylene (XLPE) containing Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanofiller was reported. The concentrations of nanofiller in XLPE were varies from 1 wt%, 2 wt% and 3 wt%. The needle-plane electrodes were used in this investigation and the gap between the electrodes was 2 mm. The structure and growth of electrical tree in XLPE were observed by using a digital camera and microscope system. Obtained results show that the tree inception voltage (TIV) of XLPE increased with addition of ZnO up to 2 wt% while the addition of 3 wt% of ZnO slightly decrease the TIV of XLPE nanocomposites. The propagation length of tree growth also show an improvement compared to the unfilled XLPE. The possible reasons for the improvement in electrical tree growth and tree inception voltage with the addition of nano fillers are discussed.