Electrical tree in silicone rubber: Roles of silicone grease and switching impulses

Abstract

This study investigates the characteristics of electrical trees in silicone rubber (SiR) samples after soaking in silicone grease (SG) for various times and exposed to switching impulses. The results show that the tree initiation probability increases from 60 to 100 % after SG soaking for 340 h when the impulse amplitude is 38 kV and the tree fractal dimension increases from 1.16 to 1.45. A similar trend is observed under negative impulse. It is suggested that SG soaking leads to a higher tree initiation probability and a larger tree fractal dimension. In addition, isothermal surface potential decay measurements are employed to obtain the trap parameters of SiR samples. Equilibrium swelling procedures are used to test the crosslinking density. The energy level and density of deep trap both decrease with SG soaking time, which is beneficial for the transport of charge carriers injected from the needle tip and further results in more severe scission of SiR molecular chains. Moreover, the expansion of free volume originating from the broken physical crosslinking structure allows more violent impact ionization of charges to occur, which can also aggravate the scission of SiR molecular chains. Therefore, the decreased tree resistance can be found in SiR after SG soaking. Furthermore, the polarity effects can be observed during the tree initiation and propagation process, which are mainly rooted in the different distribution of hole­type and electron-type traps.