Practical Aspects in the Application of Conductive Barriers to Field Controlled Air Gaps

Abstract

The principles of an optimization technique to improve the dielectric strength of nonuniform air gaps, by mitigating the field intensity of the most stressed point(s) in the gap, is presented in this paper. The approach consists of modifying the gap geometry and, if required, of adding a minimum number of conductive barriers of proper shapes. The technique is applied to some practical and relatively complex geometries, namely an air insulated wall bushing and the top electrode of a high voltage transformer. Experimental verifications are performed for the former configuration.Application of the optimization scheme to outdoor geometries is also discussed.proposed approach.The application of the approach to two practical and somewhat complex geometries, namely, an air insulated wall bushing and the top elecrode of a high voltage transformer is included in this paper, with the results having immediate industrial application. Laboratory experiments on the former geometry were conducted and experimental results are compared with theoretical values. Finally, the application of the proposed approach to outdoor geometries, in general, is introduced by considering the particular case of a tower window geometry [3].