Estimation of the Partial Discharge Inception Voltage of Electrical Asset Components at Variable Environmental Pressure: A Modelling Approach

Since partial discharges, PD, are a major accelerated degradation mechanism of organic electrical insulation systems, measuring partial discharge inception voltage, PDIV, of electrical asset components in aviation and aerospace is a fundamental tool to cope with life, safety, and reliability requirements. Partial discharge phenomenology and inception voltage depend on pressure, specifically, PDIV decreases with pressure. To avoid PD inception during aircraft or aerospace vehicle operation, the value of PDIV must be known at any pressure that electrical asset components will experience. However, a lack of experimental facilities adequate to test PD on real-size asset components might prevent from having PD-related information at pressures lower (or higher) than standard atmospheric pressure, SAP. This paper presents a heuristic approach, based on physics-derived PD field inception models, that allows the estimation of PDIV at low pressure to be carried out based on measurements made at SAP, when the typology of the defect causing partial discharge is known (from SAP PD measurements), but the precise type, size, and location of the PD-generating defect is unknown. It is shown that PDIV estimates obtained by the proposed models for internal and surface discharges are in good agreement with measured values in a range from SAP to 0.05 bar, testing simple insulation geometries but also real asset components, such as motors.