ACCELERATED AGING STUDY ON SILICONE RUBBER INSULATOR WITH CONTAMINANT LEVEL AND FOG CONDUCTIVITY VARIATIONS

• Main Author: Nabilla Haya, Shafa
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/55321
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The environmental impact due to globalization can be seen by increasing levels of pollution. Environmental changes and increased levels of pollution are factors that cause failure of transmission and distribution systems. One of the high-voltage equipment that is most affected is insulators. In general, the types of insulators that are often used in transmission and distribution systems are ceramic and glass insulators. However, ceramic and glass insulators often fail in environments with high levels of pollution, the failure in question is a decrease in the withstand voltage of the insulator. In addition, ceramic and glass type insulators have other disadvantages, namely, they are heavy and easily cracked. Therefore, we need a type of non-composite insulator that is lightweight and has good electrical and mechanical properties. An alternative type of insulator that can be used is a silicone rubber tensile insulator (SIR). This is because silicone rubber tensile insulators have several advantages over ceramic and glass insulators. However, silicone rubber tensile insulators are susceptible to weather parameters such as UV radiation, heat and humidity. Precipitation such as salt on the surface of the insulator accelerates the aging process and causes a decrease in the level of hydrophobicity on the surface of the insulator. So, further research is needed in order to determine the degree of aging of the silicone rubber tensile insulators. In this study, the aging process and daily contaminants were administered to three isolators with contaminant levels as independent variables. There is also an isolator sample that is left without aging and contamination as a comparison during the testing process. Tests carried out in this research are testing leakage current and flashover voltage, surface resistance, hydrophobicity class, SEM / EDX, TG / DTA, and FTIR. At the time of the leakage current test, the artificial environmental conditions were made to have humidity with different conductivity to see the effect of conductivity on the performance of the insulator.