Evaluation of Pollution Characteristic of Polymer Insulating Material with Surface Nano-Coating by a New Automatic Artificial Pollution Acceleration Test System

We have so far performed multistress acceleration test (EdF Test:) for SiR (silicone rubber) insulators, which were found to still keep good hydrophobicity even after 5000 hour testing time equivalent to about 10 years for outdoor exposure test in a heavy polluted area [1]. The two tests´ results indicate that one should consider non-soluble material in an accelerated pollution test so as to exactly simulate the practical conditions. From this point of view, we have developed a new automatic artificial pollution acceleration test system (AAPATS) which incorporates non-soluble material pollution to cause hydrophobicity decrease of the surface of SiR under virtually practical environments [2]. We evaluated non-soluble material pollution characteristics of SiR finished with various surface nano-coating processings aiming to enhance hydrophobicity of the material suffering from repeated pollution for a long term. The surface of material in the form of plates was treated with nano-coating by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). In this paper, we investigate hydrophobicity improvement properties of SiR material with the surface nanocoating treatment after suffering the repeated non-soluble material pollution by AAPATS.