| Title |
Electrical Insulation Characteristics of Glass-Fiber-Reinforced Engineering Plastics for Medium Voltage Switchgears |
| Authors |
Yu-Min Kim ; Young-Kwang Cha ; Kee-Joe Lim ; Myungchin Kim |
| DOI |
http://doi.org/10.5207/JIEIE.2023.37.1.062 |
| Keywords |
Breakdown strength; Engineering plastic; Medium voltage switchgear; Solid insulation |
| Abstract |
Although thermosetting plastics have been considered as a popular choice for electrical insulation applications, challenges in recycling and manufacturing have also been reported. In order to address such concern, this paper studied various performance of glass fiber reinforced engineering plastics for medium voltage switchgears. The materials considered in this study include polyamide, polycarbonate, and unsaturated polyester. Various characteristics, such as electrical breakdown strength, glass transition temperature and tensile strength, were measured. In case of the breakdown strength, polycarbonate showed the highest value. The effect of different temperature and glass fiber ratio to the breakdown strength was also studied. While the change in breakdown strength with temperature variation was measured to be relatively small for both polycarbonate and unsaturated polyester based specimen, the polyamide specimen showed a large variation in breakdown strength. Although it was also found that the breakdown strength of polycarbonate increased at higher ratio of glass fiber particles, an opposite relationship was discovered for polyamide based specimen. Meanwhile, polycarbonate and unsaturated polyester specimen showed higher glass transition temperature. Results of this study demonstrated that engineering plastics with superior performance compared to conventional epoxy materials could be realized by selecting proper base materials and addition of glass fiber particles. |