The effect of voltage and material age on the electrical tree growth and breakdown characteristics of epoxy resins

Abstract

Electrical tree growth (a long-term electrical breakdown process) has been investigated in Araldite CT200 and CT1200 epoxy resins as a function of voltage and material age (defined as the time between manufacture and testing of pin-plane samples). Reproducible and predictable electrical tree growth was obtained for both CT200 and CT1200 epoxy resins provided that (i) the essentially random tree initiation time is removed and (ii) the samples tested were of the same age. The tree growth and time to failure (defined as the time to breakdown from a pre-initiated 10 mu m tree) characteristics as a function of both voltage and sample age show large step changes at a critical voltage and critical age. In particular, the resin physical ageing has a large effect on the tree growth behaviour, with the time to failure varying by three orders of magnitude over a time span of 3 years. Measurements of some of the physical properties (residual internal mechanical stress, surface refractive index, glass transition temperature and dielectric loss) of CT200 epoxy resin all indicate the occurrence of physical ageing of the resin, with structural (network) relaxation as the most important ageing process. However, these measurements are unable to account for the step change (critical age effect) found in the time to failure of tree growth. The fractal nature of tree growth and its relationship with voltage and the long-term changes in the properties of the resin are briefly commented upon.