Evaluation of Electrical Treeing and Dielectric Spectroscopy of Silicone Rubber Nanocomposites under Thermal Ageing

In this paper, the effect of thermal ageing on the behavior of electrical treeing in silicone rubber nanocomposites is evaluated. The evaluation is carried out considering different nanofiller types. The adopted nanofillers are SiO2 and ZrO2. Accordingly, silicone rubber nanocomposites samples are prepared considering different nanofiller types with different nanofiller concentration levels. Three different concentration levels of each nanofiller types are evaluated; 0.1, 0.5 and 1 %wt. The effect of thermal ageing is carried out at ageing temperatures of 120 oC and 180 oC. The electrical treeing test is carried out by applying fixed AC voltage with a frequency of 50 Hz on the prepared samples considering needle-plane electrode configuration. The electrical tree test is preformed after each week and the evaluation is based on the electrical tree length as well as the tree shape. The obtained results are validated using FEM software. Finally, the evaluation of dielectric spectroscopy of silicone rubber nanocomposites is carried out considering ageing temperature of 180 °C.