Acid rain aging of silicone rubber materials in a fog chamber

Abstract

It is important to the power industry that insulators exhibit long life and low electrical loss in use in the field. Increased leakage current is costly as this is lost power distribution or transmission or can lead to the generation of conductive paths and the breakdown of the insulator. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of applied electrical stress on silicone rubber samples aged with acidic precipitation in a fog chamber. It was found that the use of acidic fog ages the samples chemically, regardless of the presence of applied electrical stress, whereas the application of electrical stress in conjunction with acidic precipitation, or multi-factor aging, resulted in the most pronounced aging of the materials.