Composites of LDPE filled with different amounts of graphene nanoplatelets (GnP) were prepared in form of films by means of precoating technique and single screw melt-extrusion using two types of screws, compression and mixing. This manufacturing process imposes strong anisotropy on the sample’s morphology, in which the nanoplatelets become oriented along the extrusion direction. Such orientation of GnP in LDPE matrix is confirmed by scanning electron microscopy observations and it yields unique electrical properties. As compared to pure LDPE, significant reductions of the through-plane conductivity are found for the composites at relatively low electric fields (<20 kV/mm) at low filler concentrations. Above the field level of 20 kV/mm, a crossover effect is observed that results in a strong field dependency of the conductivity where the non-linear behavior starts to dominate. Moreover, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) results indicate a decrease in polymer crystallinity of the composite matrix with increasing filler content, whereas thermogravimetric (TG) analysis shows a slight increase in the material’s thermal stability. Application of GnP also leads to improvement of mechanical properties, manifested by the increase of Young’s modulus and tensile strength in both types of samples.

The impact of the composition of blends comprising low‐density polyethylene (LDPE), isotactic polypropylene (PP) and a styrenic copolymer additive on the thermomechanical properties as well as the direct‐current (DC) electrical and thermal conductivity is investigated. The presence of 5 weight percent (wt%) of the styrenic copolymer strongly reduces the amount of PP that is needed to enhance the storage modulus above the melting temperature of LDPE from 40 to 24 wt%. At the same time, the copolymer improves the consistency of the thermomechanical properties of the resulting ternary blends. While both the DC electrical and thermal conductivity strongly decrease with PP content, the addition of the styrenic copolymer appears to have little influence on either property. Evidently, PP in combination with small amounts of a styrenic copolymer not only allows to reinforce LDPE at elevated temperatures but also functions as an electrical conductivity‐reducing additive, which makes such thermoplastic ternary formulations possible candidates for the insulation of high‐voltage power cables.

To design reliable high voltage cables, clean materials with superior insulating properties capable of operating at high electric field levels at elevated temperatures are required. This study aims at the electrical characterization of a byproduct-free crosslinked copolymer blend, which is seen as a promising alternative to conventional peroxide crosslinked polyethylene currently used for high voltage direct current cable insulation. The characterization entails direct current (DC) conductivity, dielectric response and surface potential decay measurements at different temperatures and electric field levels. In order to quantify the insulating performance of the new material, the electrical properties of the copolymer blend are compared with those of two reference materials; i.e., low-density polyethylene (LDPE) and peroxide crosslinked polyethylene (XLPE). It is found that, for electric fields of 10–50 kV/mm and temperatures varying from 30 °C to 70 °C, the DC conductivity of the copolymer blend is in the range of 10⁻¹⁷–10⁻¹³ S/m, which is close to the conductivity of crosslinked polyethylene. Furthermore, the loss tangent of the copolymer blend is about three to four times lower than that of crosslinked polyethylene and its magnitude is on the level of 0.01 at 50 °C and 0.12 at 70 °C (measured at 0.1 mHz and 6.66 kV/mm). The apparent conductivity and trap density distributions deduced from surface potential decay measurements also confirmed that the new material has electrical properties at least as good as currently used insulation materials based on XLPE (not byproduct-free). Thus, the proposed byproduct-free crosslinked copolymer blend has a high potential as a prospective insulation medium for extruded high voltage DC cables.

Partial discharge (PD) test has been widely used in condition assessment for power cables. However, discharge extinguish phenomenon occurred in PD detection hinders the effective detection of potential defects in cable accessories. For this reason, a novel PD detection method based on thermal excitation is proposed in this paper to eliminate the extinguish phenomenon and to detect the potential defects in earlier stage. First, the physical processes in PD activity and the reasons for discharge extinguishing are introduced. Then, the principle and mechanism of the thermal excitation detection method are described and analyzed respectively, that is excitation by external heating to break the dynamic equilibrium of charge movement within the defect and further stimulate new discharges. And a finite element simulation model is constructed to determine the thermal excitation parameters. Finally, the effectiveness is validated by performing thermal excitation-based PD test on some defective cables. The experimental results show that this method can significantly increase the number of discharges in off-line test, while also stimulating PD of higher amplitudes in on-line monitoring. This method can improve the sensitivity of PD detection for cable accessories and detect potential defects in early stage.

Octyl-silane-coated Al ₂ O ₃ nanoparticles are found to be a promising conductivity-reducing additive for thermoplastic ternary blends comprising low-density polyethylene (LDPE), isotactic polypropylene and a styrenic copolymer.

To realize an embedded online diagnosis system for accurate detection of internal defects in high voltage polymeric insulators, a novel ultra-wideband (UWB) microwave diagnostic system for fault detection is proposed in this paper. The UWB system is based on the multimode transferring theory on dielectric waveguides, where the level difference of transmission signals of mode transferring has been employed to detect internal defects, such as cracks. First, an investigation by simulations is performed regarding the interfacial millimeter-order cracks in both transverse and longitudinal orientations. Differences of 30∼50 dB and 20∼40 dB in receiving signals of mode-transferring between non-crack and crack cases have been observed over 3-10 GHz to transverse and longitudinal oriented cracks, respectively. Then, a test prototype is designed and manufactured for experimental verification. The measurement results have a significant 40∼60dB receiving signal level difference between the non-crack reference case and the crack case. The proposed method is promising for further development of online systems to detect millimeter-order cracks in energized polymeric insulators.