Particle tracing modelling on moisture dynamics of oil-impregnated transformer

Abstract

An accurate estimation of moisture in oil-impregnated cellulose of a transformer is difficult due to the complex moisture dynamics inside the transformer, which is highly influenced by the temperature and dimension of the transformer. In this study, a novel particle tracing method is proposed for estimating the moisture in transformers. Different from the conventional approaches using Fick's diffusion law, the proposed method formulates moisture diffusion from a microscopic view of water particles' motion. Especially, the transmission probability of water particles is employed to correlate the microscopic particles' motion with the macroscopic moisture distribution. The proposed particle tracing method is applied to model moisture dynamics in both pressboard specimens and a prototype transformer. Extensive moisture diffusion and ageing experiments are carried out to verify the proposed method.