Current State
State of the art is to design all insulation systems in a way, that local field strength peaks are avoided under all circumstances. Such systems represent a rather complex and costly solution.
A new design solution approach is an innovative insulating material, which shows a reduction of the specific electrical volume resistivity with increasing external field strength whereas it remains totally insulating at lower field strength (non-linear-conductive materials - NLCM). An externally imposed increased field strength causes a local increase of the conductivity of the NLCM. Thus, the resulting maximum field strength in the material is reduced.
The expected commercial and technical advantages are:
- Lower complexity of the insulation system in comparison with existing solutions
- Elimination of processing steps in manufacturing and installation
- Reduced total costs of the insulation
As with normal insulating materials, the NLCM must be optimized for the associated voltage level / application. The following blog entries give an exemplary overview of this process.