Corona resistance of epoxy nanocomposites: experimental results and modeling

Epoxy composites with micro, nano and micro + nano silica fillers have been evaluated for their resistance to corona using point plane electrodes. The experiments were conducted for 500 h and the surface erosion was measured after every 100 h using a surface profilometer. The results show significant improvement in corona resistance of micro+nanofilled samples and nanofilled samples when compared with the microfilled samples and unfilled materials respectively. The results emphasize the importance of good filler dispersion. A model to map the degradation path in the filled and unfilled samples was developed using Dijkstra´s shortest path algorithm. Reasonable agreement between the length of degradation path and the corona resistance in samples containing both micro + nanofillers has been demonstrated.