Experimental Study on High Electrical Breakdown of Water Dielectric

By means of a coaxial apparatus, pressurized water breakdown experiments with microsecond charging have been carried out with different surface roughness of electrodes and different ethylene glycol concentrations of ethylene glycol/water mixture. The experimental results about the breakdown stress and the effective time are presented. The breakdown stress is normalized to the situation that the effective time is transformed to 1 μs and analyzed. The conclusions are as follows: (1) the breakdown stress formula is modified to E = 0.561MA-1/10t-1eff/NP1/8; (2)the coefficient M is significantly increased by surface polishing and ethylene glycol additive; (3) it is accumulative for the capacity of improving electrical breakdown strength for surface polishing,ethylene glycol additive, and pressurization, of which pressurization is the most effective method;(4) the highest stress of 235.5 kV/cm is observed in ethylene glycol/water mixture with an ethylene glycol concentration of 80% at a hydrostatic pressure of 1215.9 kPa and is about one time greater than that in pure water at constant pressure; (5) for pressurization and surface pohshing,the primary mechanism to improve the breakdown strength of water dielectric is the increase in the breakdown time delay. Research results indicate great potential in the application of the high power pulse conditioning system of water dielectric.