Experience with salt-fog and inclined-plane tests for aging polymeric insulators and materials

Aging, under contaminated conditions, manifests itself by tracking and/or erosion of polymer materials and insulators and usually leads to failure of insulators. Aging is still one of the main causes of the registered failures of polymer insulators in the field. Consequently, to improve both materials and insulator designs, it is important to understand the mechanisms of aging, as well as the factors surrounding aging, and the best way to do this is through actual field experience. However, the problem with field experience is that it often requires a very long time before any noticeable changes become evident. For this reason, several laboratory accelerated tests have been developed to evaluate aging of polymer materials and insulators.