Thermoplastic materials aging under various stresses

The most popular cable insulation material used is XLPE due to its excellent electrical and thermal properties. However, it does not lend itself to ease of recycling. As a result of an increase in concern worldwide regarding environmental protection, it is the objective of this work to investigate whether a thermoplastic material could be used to replace XLPE for cable insulation. Among thermoplastic materials, HDPE is regarded as one with the most similar properties as XLPE. Although it is clear that the performance of polymeric material changes with different stresses, especially polymer nanocomposites aging process under AC electric field stresses, there are also not many publications on how a superimposed AC voltage would affect the insulation’s performance in HVDC power systems. This paper reports the dielectric properties of HDPE under thermo-electrical stresses. DC stress with and without a superimposed AC stress were applied in the experiments undertaken. The degradation of materials with change in frequencies are summarized and discussed