A study of electric stress enhancement. Part 1. Implication in power cable design

The increase in electric stress due to a surface protrusion at the interface between a semiconductive shield and a polymer insulation layer in power cables can lead to localized electron injection into the polymer insulation and result in undesired material degradation. This paper reports the analyses of electric stress enhancement of surface protrusions in several commonly encountered medium- and high-voltage power cable configurations. First, a brief review of the electric stress enhancement theories is presented. Then evaluations using these theories for various power cable configurations are made, and it is shown that theories considering a hyperboloidal protrusion will exhibit more realistic stress enhancement results than the cases based on a spheroidal protrusion. Further examination reveals that, besides the sharpness of a protrusion, thickness of the insulation medium also plays a governing role in the stress enhancement at the interfaces between different dielectric media. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it is a surprise to observe that a thicker insulation can actually cause higher stress enhancement at a protrusion tip, under a given applied voltage. Because of this, a flatter surface protrusion at a higher voltage setting, which usually has thicker insulation, can result in earlier degradation than a sharper protrusion at a lower voltage, even though sharper extrusions are expected to have higher stress enhancement. As a result, thicker insulation may not always be advantageous in the power cable design for higher voltage applications.