Design Sensitivity Analysis Applied to High Temperature/High Voltage Direct Current Power Systems

In this paper, the finite element algorithm is implemented to calculate field and temperature variation in high voltage direct current cylindrical cables. Such cables contain joins and interconnects which result in physical discontinuities where strong fields may be present, resulting in dielectric breakdown during power switching events. To minimize the possibility of catastrophic failure, design sensitivity analysis is applied to determine a geometry that minimizes the field variation within the region of interest. Since the material properties in these systems demonstrate both temperature and field dependencies, the resulting nonlinearities are considered in the formulation.