Study of corona degradation of polymeric insulating samples using high dynamic range imaging technique

Abstract

Corona is considered to be an unavoidable event in high voltage transmission system. The effect of corona includes the generation of audio noise, radio interference, power loss etc., adding to the list, corona has been identified as a potential threat for the long term operation of high voltage polymeric insulators. Studies on the corona phenomena using digital imaging of electrical discharges and related image processing have found to be the recent topic of research in discharge analysis, as they give better insight into the physical phenomenon. However, concluding based on images taken with the similar camera setting may not be appropriate as images differ largely with the change in camera parameters. In this paper an attempt is made to use the high dynamic range (HDR) imaging technique to accurately identify the location of corona stress on the polymeric samples. The present study highlights the application of high dynamic range imaging technique and also emphasis HDR as a promising tool for studying corona discharges in more realistic way.