An Examination of the Statistics of Breakdown in a Pressurized, Flowing, Synthetic Oil Dielectric

An investigation of the statistical properties of dielectric breakdown in the synthetic oil dielectric poly-alpha olefin as a function of both oil pressure and inter-electrode gap separation has generated several important findings. Our results confirm previous investigators´ findings relating a nonlinear relationship between the mean breakdown electric field strength and the operating pressure. We demonstrate a similar effect relating the standard deviation of the breakdown electric fields strength and pressure that depends upon the gap separation.