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Experimental and Simulation Studies on Room

Temperature Vulcanization (RTV) Silicone Material
under Inclined Plane Tracking and Erosion Test
Diffni Gomez A M Rafiq Mathersa AB Dr Vasudev N
High Voltage Division High Voltage Division High Voltage Division
Central Power Research Institute Central Power Research Institute Central Power Research Institute
Bangalore Bangalore Bangalore
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— In an electric power system, one of the most vital places of our country, it is necessary to reduce or prevent the
equipment is the insulator. In early times, porcelain insulators transmission line outages caused by pollution. There are few
are commonly used in transmission as well as in distribution techniques such as greasing, hot-line washing etc to overcome
network. The proposal of this work is to make sure that safer and the problem of pollution-related outages. The greasing
more protected distribution system, to decrease maintenance
technique appeared to be messy & the hot line-washing is an
expenses of the insulation system and to enhance system
efficiency. The aim of this paper was to study and assess the expensive technique. In the 1980s, commercial-grade room-
performance of RTV (Room temperature vulcanization) silicone temperature vulcanizing (RTV) coating was applied on a large
materials used to reduce flashover in high voltage insulators that scale. [1] In wet and polluted environments, composite
run in polluted environments. Electrical tracking is a insulation may be degraded through heat ablation from dry-
development process of a conducting path across the material band arcing resulting in tracking or erosion of the material
due to erosion under High Voltage application. The leakage which can cause failure. Hence, understanding tracking and
current on the polluted surface resulted in the material erosion of composite materials are important in the design of
deterioration. Electric field and voltage distribution for RTV external insulation, particularly under polluted conditions. The
silicone material under contamination condition have been done
protection practices on outdoor insulators in contaminated
using finite element analysis. The simulation works using Finite
Element software of ElecNet was applied to the tracking test environments have mostly been through trial and error. Over
condition of IEC 60587 standards. The results show that the years, different technologies have been used with varying
electric field strength is high on the edges of pollutant track at a degrees of achievement.
higher voltage level, and pollutant track has no effect on the The inclined plane tracking test has been reliable as a
voltage distribution along the surface. Experiments have been method of ranking insulating materials in terms of their ability
conducted for the RTV silicone material for the different voltage to withstand the synergy of moisture, pollution, and voltage,
and contaminant flow as per the standards. From the results, it all of which are conductive to tracking and erosion of
was observed that increase in voltage potential eventually composite materials. The inclined plane tracking test is a
increases the electric field distribution. The leakage current was
severe test to assess the tracking performance of insulation
measured across the shunt using the Pico scope. A protective
circuit was made across the shunt. The leakage current pattern materials [2].
has been studied on the different applied voltage for the RTV One of the current technologies, Room Temperature
silicone material. Room Temperature Vulcanization silicone Vulcanized (RTV) coatings have become very trendy. In this
material shows an evidence of good insulation to tracking and paper, RTV samples (12cm × 5 cm × 0.6 cm) were tested
erosion test. according to IEC 60587 [3], a test for evaluating insulation to
tracking and erosion properties of the composites. There is a
Keywords—Tracking and Erosion,RTV,FEM challenge to consider the field simulation in the Inclined Plane
I. INTRODUCTION Tracking Test (IPT) in connected to surface tracking studies.
This paper presents the experimental results and simulation
Electric power is an essential part of the industrial and all- performed with above-mentioned samples. In order to study
round growth of a country. With the ever growing entail for the electrical performances of insulating materials, Leakage
electrical power, there has been a steady growth in current measurement is used as the tools to specify the
transmission lines for transfer of bulk power over a longer degradation of the materials. From the simulation point of
length. The uninterrupted power transmission system is very view, the parameters used are applied voltage, electrical
crucial. Hence, electrical insulation is the backbone of modern conductivity and relative permittivity of the specimen and
power system network, as it plays very important role in contaminant in order to investigate the electric field of RTV
power system reliability. The consistency of power system surface.
mainly depends on the pollution performance of insulators.
Due to the severe rise in the levels of pollution in several

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II. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION

A. Tracking and Erosion
As per the test arrangement of IEC 60587 standard;
the test setup has been made and experiment has been
conducted. The test procedure is as follows, the specimen was
mounted between the two electrodes at an angle of 45º from
the horizontal. The spacing between the electrodes is 50 ±
0.5mm apart. The contaminant made of 0.1% ammonium
chloride (NH4Cl) and 0.02% of non-ionic wetting agent and
allowed to fall on the filter paper pad, so as to wet the paper
thoroughly. The flow rate of the contaminant is 0.60 ml/min Fig. 2. RTV samples before and after tracking and erosion test with
for 4.5 kV and 0.15 ml/min for 2.5 kV. The contaminant was electrodes.
allowed to flow steadily down the face of the test specimen
between the electrodes. With the contaminant flowing
uniformly at the specified rate, the voltage of specified value
is applied between the electrodes and the voltage was
maintained for 6 hours. Leakage current was monitored with
the help of Pico scope model no 6624. The criterion for failure
is also based upon the leakage current flowing along the
surface of the specimens. The current should not go beyond
60 mA for 2 s. The Fig. 1 shows the schematic diagram of
Inclined plane Tracking and Erosion Test setup.

Fig. 3. RTV Samples before Tracking and Erosion test (virgin sample).

Fig. 4. RTV Samples after Tracking and Erosion Test.

The Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 show the RTV sample before and
after Tracking and Erosion Test by the inclined plane method.
In this process, five samples each have been considered to
evaluate the test for the two application of voltage.

Fig. 1. Schematic Diagram of the Inclined plane Tracking and

Erosion Test Setup.

Electrodes shall be made of stainless steel material. The

top electrode and the bottom electrode along with the RTV
samples are shown in Fig 2.

Fig. 5. Leakage current pattern on 4.5 kV &2.5 kV RTV sample in a short

time.


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The leakage current was measured in a short time as shown B. Simulation Results and Analysis
in Fig 5 across the shunt. From the above pattern, it is The electric field distribution and voltage distribution
observed the current was much below 60mA.The protection of the contaminated insulator surface patterns for the two
circuit was connected to the shunt in order to isolate surges cases 4.5 kV and 2.5 kV RTV Samples as shown in the Fig. 7
from the scope. The leakage current pattern has been studied & Fig. 8. Potential distributions gradually decrease from HV
on the different applied voltage for the RTV silicone rubber electrode to the ground electrode. Higher electric field strength
material in a short time. The Room Temperature appears at the tapered and edge shape of pollutant solution.
Vulcanization silicone rubber material shows an evidence of
good insulation to tracking and erosion test.
III. SIMULATION
A. Simulation studies
The simulations of the electric field over the
contaminated insulator surfaces are intended to determine the
high-stress regions. A finite element package is employed for
RTV modeling to determine the potential and the electric field
distribution along the creepage distance of the samples. The
simulation was modeled according to the test arrangement of
IEC 60587 standard. The simulation was drawn in ElecNet
plane parallel 2D model class with the sample and electrode
configuration shown in Fig 6. A specimen with a size of
5 cm x 12 cm and thickness of 0.6 cm was used as the sample
to be tested. To consider the effect of the pollutant on the
surface, contaminant solutions were simulated as per
assumption in the actual experiment. The samples were tested
at two test levels 2.5kV and 4.5kV was applied to the RTV
materials. The pollutant flow rate is adjusted according to the
applied voltage as stated in IEC 60587 standards. The Fig. 7. Potential distribution on the 4.5 kV & 2.5 kV RTV sample.
conductivity of the contamination layer was assigned in the
software based on the flow rate. It is significant to state that
the materials properties particularly electrical conductivity, the
relative permittivity of the sample, pollutant solution and air
are required for simulation purpose. In this study, [4] the
relative permittivity of the air was fixed to 1, the conductivity
of the air is 2 x 10-4 S/m and the relative permittivity of
pollutant solution is 81, conductivity of the pollutant is
0.011 S/m for 2.5 kV, pollutant is 0.026 S/m of 4.5 kV
respectively. The diameter of the pollutant assumed here is
around 0.8 mm.

Fig. 8. Electric field distribution on the 4.5 kV & 2.5 kV RTV sample.
Graph of electric field distribution along the pollutant
surface in the insulator is shown in Fig 9. It is inferred
that when applied potential increases electric field also
increases. It is believed that higher applied potential may
give additional energy for the electron to get settled on the
insulator surface. The field was much higher for the
higher voltage 4.5kV compare to the case of 2.5 kV.
Fig. 6. 2D simulation model. Electric field taken along the surface of the contaminant is
shown in Fig 9.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors are thankful to the management of CPRI for the
permission to present the paper.
REFERENCES

[1] D. Devendranath, K.A. Aravind, A. Ramulu and A.K. Tripathy,

"Accelerated-ageing test for RTV-coated insulators: analysis of
electrical and material properties," IEE Proc.-Gener. Transm. Distrib.,
vol. 152, no. 5, September 2005
[2] J. P. Holtzhausen, Kato Engelbrecht, Petrus Pieterse, "Inclined Plane
Tests on RTV-Silicone Rubber Coated Porcelain and Cyclo-Aliphatic
Epoxy Resin Samples," University Of Stellenbosch.
[3] IEC 60587 “Test methods for evaluating resistance to tracking and
Fig. 9. Electric Field pattern for 4.5 kV and 2.5 kV.
erosion of electrical insulating materials used under severe ambient
conditions,” Second edition, 1984-01.
IV CONCLUSIONS
[4] Fatin Liyana Muhamedin, Mam Piah and Nordiana Azlin Othman,
From the above results, leakage current values were “Modelling on Tracking Test Condition of Polymer Nanocomposites
also observed to be minimal. Slight carbonization was formed using Finite Element Simulation,” Telkomnika journal, vol. 13, no. 4,
pp. 1194-1203, December 2015.
near the low voltage electrode due to dry band formation but
no tracks or erosion was observed on the insulator samples.
Experimental results showed comparable performance of RTV
silicone to HTV silicone with respect to resistance to tracking
and erosion test. Modelling was done using ElecNet Finite
Element software to analyze Voltage distribution and Electric
field distribution which exhibited predictable effects on RTV
silicone materials at static conditions. Simulations under
dynamic conditions are under study.