Can PD phenomenon be analysed by deterministic chaos?

Knowledge of partial discharges (PDs) is important to diagnose and predict the health of insulation. Using a well established and experimentally verified model of PD for ellipsoidal voids (Niemeyer and Gutfleisch [1995]), it has been shown that a part of the underlying dynamics of the PD process can be explained by using the principles of chaos mathematics. This paper further indicates the possible use of chaos mathematics for the recognition and distinction between PD faults. Chaos refers to a state where the predictive abilities of a systems´ future are lost and the system is rendered aperiodic. It has been shown that the PD phenomenon is rendered chaotic due to presence of memory effects and timelags. The analysis of PD using deterministic chaos comprises of the study of the basic system dynamics of the PD phenomenon. This involves the construction of the PD attractor in state-space and its quantification by means of dynamic qualifiers using chaos algorithms. The evolution of the PD system is studied using time series as well as state-space graphs and chaotic attractors have been determined for ellipsoidal voids in epoxy. A dynamic qualifier called the Lyapunov exponent, which describes dynamic behavior of the attractor qualitatively as well as quantitatively, has been evaluated for the above two cases. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first attempt to show chaos mathematics as a promising way of analyzing PDs and recognizing PD faults