PD Occurrence Characteristics according to Voltage and Time in Solid Insulator

The occurrence of partial discharge (PD) in solid dielectrics is very harmful because it leads to the deterioration of insulation by electrical, chemical, and thermal reactions as a combined action of the discharged ions bombarding the surface and by the action of chemical compounds that are formed by the discharge. Consequently, if any defects are present in the solid insulation system, performance decreases until the system breaks down. Therefore, removing or suppressing the defect is very important. Voids are a typical defect in the solid insulation system and are very harmful because they deteriorate insulation. As a basic step, studying the properties of PD in voids is important because an accurate knowledge of these properties is required to estimate the deterioration of voids. In this paper, the correlation between the size of voids and internal PD is discussed as a function of the time of the applied voltage and its magnitude. Magnitude, repetition rate, average discharge power, and average discharge current of PD in specimens with large voids were found to be larger than the others in this experiment. The smaller specimens had voids when the magnitude and number of PDs were reduced.