The influence of pre-stressing on breakdown characteristics in liquid silicone rubber

Liquid silicone rubber (LSR) has increasingly been used as one kind of inner insulating material. Studies of space charge and its effect during pre-stressing and breakdown (BD) process in LSR were carried out. DC electrical breakdown field (BDF) of LSR specimens before and after DC electrical pre-stressing was measured. The space charge characteristics of LSR specimens under different DC electrical pre-stressing fields and that during the BD processes were measured by a pulsed electro-acoustic (PEA) method. It was found that the amount of homo space charges near electrodes increases obviously as a rising electric field is applied. Whether the polarity of BDF is the same as that of the pre-stressing field or not, the DC BDF of pre-stressed specimens is higher than that of specimens without pre-stressing. However, the pre-stressing does not show monotone and saturation effects, as generally occurs in the literature. In hetero BD experiments for example, with an increasing pre-stressing field, the DC BDF first increases up to 14.5% at the pre-stressing field of 25 kV/mm and then decreases. The influence of pre-stressing on the BD processes in LSR are discussed. The relationship between space charge and the DC BDF was related to the microstructure of nano-silica and LSR molecules.