Pulse-sequence-analysis, a way to get a better insight into the physics of discharges

Partial discharge measurements are often used as a diagnostic tool to monitor degradation phenomena, whereby more or less sophisticated `statistic packages´ are used to evaluate the data sets. In contrast to the usual practice of considering only the statistic distributions of the data accumulated in a preset time interval, the paper proposes to use the direct pulse/pulse correlations of consecutive discharge pulses. Using data obtained in different stages of the growth of an electrical tree in polyethylene the advantages of the PSA-method are demonstrated