Research on Behavior of Water Tree Growth in XLPE Insulation Based on Finite Element Analysis

Water treeing is one of the main deterioration phenomena,which can affect the service lifetime of the XLPE power cable.This study aims to investigate the role of the electric field intensity in the water treeing phenimena under the simultaneous consideration of the physical and chemical properties of XLPE cable insulation.For this purpose,the XLPE insulation specimens with different physical and chemical properties used in the water treeing test were prepared through the accelerated thermal aging of 3 kV-rated XLPE cable samples,and the water needle electrodes declined by some arbitrary angle values to the gradient direction of the external electric field are introduced into both the water treeing and the numerical experiments.