Partial discharge analysis of multi-defect probes

Partial discharges measurement and analysis is a common tool for insulating systems diagnosis. In the last years, much work has been done on single defect probes in order to obtain characteristic patterns identifying defects, but very little research has been published on multi-defect systems. In that general context, the aim of the Spanish national research project MEFADEP was to investigate into the failure and degradation mechanisms of insulating materials through observing the behaviour of different types of defects in several probes. Some silicon probes were tested containing standard defects for validation of the single defect discrimination and classification method. Afterwards, some measurements were carried out to provide an attempt on multi-defect identification and classification. Experimental results on some multi-defect measurements were obtained. Some guidelines for an identification and classification method of multi-defect measurements are suggested.