Erosion resistance of different housing materials to UV irradiation and surface discharges action

The author evaluates a technique to assess HV outdoor composite insulation housing materials, based on the cyclic chamber ageing of the samples under the action of UV irradiation and surface partial discharges and subsequent measurements of their mass losses, wetting angle and surface roughness. UV irradiation exhibits a stronger influence on the measured parameters. However, the superposition principle does not obey, and the effects of the complex ageing are weaker than the sums of that for the simple ageing procedures. The most stable behaviour was observed for the studied silicone rubbers. The differences for the RTV and HTV rubbers in their mass losses and wetting angles changes support a hypothesis on the better self-smearing properties of the former. A significant improvement of the stability for casting epoxy resins can be obtained by the silanization of the quartz filler