A majority of the high voltage (HV) electrical equipment which has solid-gas insulation has suffered greatly from the accumulation of the surface charges generated from the corona discharge. The local electric field may be distorted by the surface charge’s existence and in turn causes the surface flashover faults in excessive circumstances. Consequently, it’s significant to work out the mechanism of the procedure of the surface charge accumulation. A simulation model which combines both the charge trapping-detrapping procedure and the plasma hydrodynamics was created. The outcome of the simulation has agreed with the experimental results. The corona discharge intensity rises in the initial stage and then reduces as time goes by. There are various shapes of the surface potential distribution curves at various times. The central value increases quickly with time first and at last becomes saturated. Surface charges are observed in the epoxy insulator’s skin layer, some of them are mobile but some are captured by traps.
Part of the book: Atmospheric Pressure Plasma
Many researchers have proposed a variety of mathematical models to simulate the surface charge accumulation process of DC-GIS/GIL spacers. However, few of them took the gas collision ionization and charge trapping-detrapping process into consideration. This chapter combined the plasma hydrodynamics and charge transport equations and built a modified model. Some conclusions are shown as follows: for the basin-type spacer, the surface charge has the same polarity as the applied voltage on the lower surface but the opposite polarity on the upper surface. For the disc-type spacer, the surface charge has the same polarity as the applied voltage near the shell but the opposite polarity near the conductor under negative voltage. But under positive voltage, negative charge exists almost on the whole surface. The most serious distortion of the electric field occurs at the triple junction of epoxy spacer. Under load condition, there is an obvious temperature rise on the conductor due to joule heating, which has a great influence on the electric field distribution. The application of shielding electrodes has the function of field grading at the triple junction, which can be referred in the DC GIS/GIL design.
Part of the book: Electric Power Conversion