Development of a test setup for ageing of compound insulation materials with microscale fillers under thermal and rectangular voltage stress

Inhalt:
High frequency rectangular voltage stress, caused by the pulse width modulation of power electronic modules, can lead to an additional heating of the modules and thus to an accelerated ageing of the insulation system. The addition of microscale fillers can improve the thermal and other material properties of the insulation material. However, the effect of fillers on electro-thermal ageing needs to be investigated. For the scope of the investigation a rectangular voltage generator is needed to generate a rectangular voltage waveform with controllable frequency and voltage amplitude of up to 20 kHz and 20 kV peak-to peak. In this paper, a test circuit for the experimental investigation is developed and evaluated using simulations. A FEM model is presented to quantify the dielectric heating due to the applied high frequency rectangular voltage stress. Additionally, a circuit simulation is used to discuss the dimensioning of different components. Future work will focus on ageing studies of filled and unfilled insulation material samples by using the proposed experimental test setup.