Tracking, Erosion and Morphological Study of Heat Shrink Anti Tracking Tubes

Abstract

Components of Medium Voltage (MV) cable network are very much vulnerable under operational stresses and ageing. Heat Shrinkable Anti-Tracking Tube (HSATT), an integral part of the Joints and terminations of the MV cable network system is used to cover and safeguard the power cable joints. In cable system joint and termination are the weakest but the critical part and fail easily under stress. The most threatening source of HSATT failure is electrical tracking. Electrical tracking develops when a conducting path across the HSATT formed under electric stress due to surface discharge. Arcs created from this surface discharge phenomenon burn the HSATT and create carbonized tracks in the long run. This paper reports the electrical tracking performance of three commercially available HSATT samples. Crosslinked polyethylene (XLPE) is the key ingredient for heat shrinkable materials. Electrical tracking using the inclined-plane tracking (IPT) method develops from surface discharge activity followed by erosion under wet and contaminated conditions. So, the material under IPT test faced electrical, environmental and thermal stresses. Among these three HSATT samples two samples failed to withstand these three dimensional stress factors. Dielectric breakdown strength and volume resistance tests were carried out to cross examine the IPT results and the results are identical. The morphology has been studied to understand the failure mechanism of HSATT samples. A morphological model is presented to scrutinize the IPT test failure mechanism and the rate of erosion propagation in the HSATT samples.