A Study on Synthetic Failure-finding Method for Electrical and Thermal Degradation of Polymer Insulator by Surface Discharge

Polymer insulators are used widely in variable fields for high voltage insulation and separating people from high voltage charging parts for safety and also supporting overhead power line in electric railway. But it may be broken down by tracking path resulting from continuous surface discharge. This paper has investigated synthetically both the characteristics of electrical aging using precision CT(current transformer) and the thermal aging using thermography method. Electrical aging was analyzed for time-frequency region and thermal aging was illustrated by image processing method. This synthetic method may be an appropriate one to evaluate the surface degradation of polymer insulator.