Analysis and modelling of electrical tree growth in synthetic resins over a wide range of stressing voltage

Abstract

A simple accumulated damage analysis method and an empirical field-driven tree growth model are proposed to characterize and describe the spatial and temporal development of electrical trees. Examples are presented for trees grown in CT200 and CY1311 epoxy resin pin-plane samples subjected to a wide range of 50 Hz alternating current electrical stress. It is shown that a material's resistance to treeing may be described quantitatively, allowing the relative performance of different synthetic resins to be easily compared. For CY1311 epoxy resin, tree structural characteristics change progressively from branch to bush structures as the stressing voltage is increased. It is shown that the time to failure is primarily influenced by the local electric field and the resultant tree geometry and fractal dimension of tree growth and is not simply dependent on the applied voltage.