Investigation of Electrical characteristics of Dielectric fluids using 3D Finite Element Method

This work is intended to focus towards identifying alternate insulating medium for replacing the conventional mineral oil. Even though they are predominant in their field of applications, they have some disadvantages of non-biodegradability., scarcity of availability in future and environmental unsociable nature. These above factors create focus towards finding of alternate to traditional mineral oil. Knowledge of the Electric Field (E-Field) and potential distribution along the material surface is a basic requirement for reliable assessment of electrical behaviour of liquid insulation. With this aim, investigation of alternate dielectric fluids is performed by 3-Dimensional (3D) Finite Element Method. Accordingly., the paper is classified into two sections. In the first section, simulation work is carried out by analysing the electrical characteristics using E-field and electric potential distribution. In the second section., experimental work is carried out to find the alternate dielectric fluids, natural esters based vegetable oils which are considered as environmental friendly and biodegradable products. The result shows that natural ester exhibit good electrical characteristics than mineral oil.