Measurement of partial discharge activities within two artificial spherical voids in an epoxy resin

Measurement of partial discharge activities within insulation systems has been extensively performed. It has been widely used in the performance assessment of an insulation system and for insulation diagnostics. Since a void cavity is one of the potential sources of PD activity in insulation which may cause degradation and breakdown, it is very important to study PD events associated with void cavities solid dielectric insulation. In this work, the measurement of PD activity has been performed on test samples consisting of two spherical voids within an epoxy resin. Two voids of same and different sizes are positioned close to each other and in parallel with the direction of the applied field within the epoxy. Through comparison of the experiment data for PD events within a single void in the epoxy, single and multiple discharge sources from different voids can be clearly distinguished.