Lifetime assessment for oil-paper insulation using thermal and electrical multiple degradation

Abstract

In this paper, in order to investigate the lifetime of oil-paper insulation, specimens were artificially aged with thermal and electrical multiple stresses. Accelerated ageing factors and equivalent operating years for each aging temperatures were derived from results of tensile strengths for the aged paper specimens. Also, the evaluation for the multi-stress aged specimens were carried out through the measurement of impulse breakdown voltage at high temperature of 85°C. The lifetimes of the oil-paper insulations were calculated with the value of 66.7 for 1.0 mm thickness specimens and 69.7 for 1.25 mm thickness specimens throughout the analysis of impulse BD voltages using equivalent operating years, which means that dielectric strengths would not be severely decreased until the mechanical lifetime limit. Therefore, for the lifetime evaluation of the oil-paper insulation, thermal aging would be considered as a dominant factor whereas electrical degradation would be less effective.