2013 Annual Report Conference on Electrical Insulation and Dielectric Phenomena
The Oil-paper Insulation Breakdown
Characteristics under Non-standard Lightning
Impulse Voltages
Zhe Wang, Qiaogen Zhang, Tonglei Wang, Yibo Han, Longchen Liu
School of Electrical Engineering and State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment,
Xi’an Jiaotong University. 28 West Xianning Road, Xi’an, 710049, P.R. China
：
ABSTRACT The non-standard lightning impulse voltages have
variable front time, duration time and may have high-frequency
components superimposed on the waveforms due to the reflection
in the substation and other factors. These surges can propagate to
the transformer winding and may even lead to the breakdown of
the winding insulation. To maintain the high reliability in
insulation performance of the oil-immersed transformer and
offer reference to the design of the insulation in the transformers,
it is necessary to obtain the oil-paper insulation characteristics
under non-standard lightning impulse voltages (non-standard
LIWs). In this paper, two electrode models are established to
simulate the insulation configuration of windings in oil-immersed
transformers. The experiments were carried out on the
breakdown characteristics of the electrode model in oil. The
breakdown voltages of oil-paper insulation for different front
time of impulses, oil-gap distance and insulation structure were
measured and then compared with the breakdown voltages under
standard lightning impulse waveform (SLIW). In the examined
range, the dielectric breakdown values under steep front
non-standard lightning impulse waveforms were much higher
than those under standard lightning impulse waveforms in all
cases. Breakdown voltage of turn-to-turn model under oscillating
lightning impulse waveform (OLIW) is much higher than that
under SLIW. The experiment results clearly showed that the
same insulation structure could withstand higher steep front
non-standard LIWs and OLIWs, and these findings may offer a
reference to clarify the insulation margin between non-standard
LIWs or OLIWs and SLIWs.
KEY WORDS ： Non-standard lightning impulse voltages;
oil-paper insulation; breakdown characteristics; time to
breakdown; front time; insulation structure
ⅠINTRODUCTION
There is an increasing demand to reduce the cost of electric
power equipment and tolerance of insulation designs. In order
to evaluate the economy of insulation design and insulation
reliabilities of oil-immersed transformers [1], it is important to
assess actual waveforms generated at substations [2]. Analyses
of surge waveforms generated at transformer terminals in
substations occasionally show that waveforms are
accompanied with steep front and high frequency oscillation
caused by reflections in the substations [3]. Besides, transient
overvoltage in the winding caused by lightning impulse
invading into the transformer may have oscillation from
978-1-4799-2597-1/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
883
several tens kHz to several hundred kHz. For these reasons,
insulation characteristics of transformer insulation should be
investigated under these non-standard LIWs. Previous
researches about breakdown characteristic of some identical
non-standard LIWs such as pulse-shaped waveform, waveform
with sharp peak in the wavefront, and damped-oscillation
surge with oscillation frequency above 0.4 MHz have been
carried out [5.6]. However, the influence of impulse voltage
with a SLIW wavetail time and fast front time on the typical
insulation of power transformer and breakdown characteristics
of turn-to-turn model under OLIW with oscillation frequency
of several tens kHz to several hundred kHz should also be
studied.
In this paper, breakdown characteristics of two typical
oil-paper insulation models were studied under non-standard
LIWs to clarify the insulation margin between non-standard
LIWs or OLIWs and SLIWs. Besides, influence of number of
layers on breakdown characteristic was investigated when the
total thickness of paper remains constant.
ⅡEXPERIMENT SETUP
A. Insulation Models
As shown in Fig .1, the insulation models used to simulate
insulation structures in the power transformer are the
sphere-plate model (simulating main insulation)and the turn-
to-turn model (simulating longitudinal insulation). The
diameter of sphere electrode and plate electrode is 60 mm and
100 mm, respectively. Insulation pressboard between the two
electrode is 1 mm thick. Fig .1b shows the turn-to-turn
insulation model made by bending a pair of 2 mm×10 mm
rectangular copper wire with insulation paper and then
bundling them together. Here, insulation paper tape is rolling
around the copper wire with each top layer covering half the
width of the previous one. And the single layer thickness of
insulation paper is 50μm or 80μm in diffenent experiment
conditions.
B. Pre-treatment of the Models
Insulation pressboards and turn-to-turn insulation models
，℃
were dried in a vacuum drying oven, (-0.95bar 80 , 24 hours)
for 24 h. All the models were placed into a vacuum apparatus
in which they were degassed bellow 100 Pa for 24 hours and
filled with transformer insulating oil through vacuum
deaeration in the meanwhile. The withstand voltage of oil was
kept above 60kV [3].

Fig .2 Waveform of oscillating lightning impulse

Fig .3 shows the average BDVs of sphere-plate model under
impulse voltage with 5 different front times in comparisons
with those under SLIW. BDV increases with the decreasing of
(a) Sphere-plate model the front time when the gap distance is either 3mm or 4mm.
The trend of the curves is increasing exponentially. Fig .4
shows relative values of BDVs under impulse waveforms with
different front time in comparison to the BDVs under SLIW.
The increase of oil gap have no significant influence on the
BDV for the reason that under impulse voltage with front time
0.25 μs, BDV is 10 % , 9% and 12% higher than that under
SLIW when gap distance is 3 mm, 4 mm and 5 mm,
(b) Turn-to-turn insulation model respectively.
Fig. 1 Insulation models

C. Applied Waveforms
Non-standard LIWs such as impulse voltage waveform with
different front time and two oscillating lightning impulse
waveforms (OLIWs) were used, whose parameters are given in
Ⅰ
Table . Standard lightning impulse waveform (SLIW) was
also applied for comparison. An example of OLIW is shown in
Fig. 2. The “overvoltage rate” used to represent the damping
extent of the OLIW is defined as K= (Up1+-Up1-)/Up1+.
TABLE Ⅰ
PARAMETER OF APPLIED NON-STANDARD LIWS
Front Wavetail Oscillation K
time (μs) time (μs) frequency (kHz)
Impulse ～
0.25 ～
48 51 - -
waveforms 2.5 Fig .3 Breakdown voltage of sphere-plate model under impulse voltage
OLIW 1 1.2 50 340 52% waveforms with different front time (gap distance 4mm and 3mm)
OLIW 2 1.3 50 280 54.5%

D. Experiment Method
For the sphere-plate model, voltages were applied to the
sphere electrode and the plate electrode was grounded. For the
turn-to-turn insulation model, high voltage was applied to one
of the rectangular copper wire and the other was grounded.
The average BDVs was obtained using the up-down method,
and a voltage was applied once every 5 kV step starting from
about 50% of the estimated BDV. 16 efficient points were
made under each condition in this experiment on either of the
models.
Ⅲ RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
A. Breakdown Characteristics of Sphere-plate Model under Fig .4 relative values of BDVs of sphere-plate model under impulse voltage
Impulse Waveforms waveforms with different front time (gap distance: 3 mm, 4 mm and 5mm)

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 The breakdown time under 0.25/48 μs is 2.52 μs, only 24% under impulse waveform with different front time. The results
of that under SLIW and 15% of that under 2.5/50 μs, when the reveal that a slower front time will lead to a bigger average
gap distance is 4 mm. This indicates that breakdown time is breakdown time. Average breakdown time of turn-to-turn
strongly influenced by the front time. models with 3 layers 50 μm insulation paper under front time
0.25 μs, 0.8 μs, 1.2 μs and 2.5 μs is 1μs, 2μs, 2.1μs and 4 μs,
B. Breakdown Characteristics of Turn-to-turn Model
respectively. Besides, the average breakdown time is strongly
Fig. 5 shows the average BDVs of turn-to-turn insulation influenced by the total thickness of insulation paper as the
model under the impulse voltage with different front time. increase of number of layers (total thickness) results in a
Each rectangular copper wire was covered with 10 layers of 50 significant increase of breakdown time. In addition, the growth
μm insulation paper. The trend of BDVs, the same to that of degree of breakdown time is also influenced by the front time.
sphere-plate model, increases with the front time becoming The increase of breakdown time is 4.7 μs when front time is
faster. BDV under 0.25μs is 1.16 times of that under SLIW, 0.25 μs, whereas, it reaches 5.59 μs and 8 μs when front time
and the ascension of the voltage is more remarkable than that is 0.8 μs and 2.5 μs, respectively.
of sphere-plate model.
Table Ⅱ summarizes the average BDVs of turn-to-turn
model with 10 layers of 50 μm insulation paper under impulse
waveforms, SLIW and OLIWs. And BDVs were normalized
by that under SLIW. It is indicated that OLIWs have a higher
BDV in comparison to that under SLIW. Besides, it should be
noted that the increase of oscillation frequency of the OLIW
will lead to an increase of BDV as overvoltage rate remains
the same.
Fig .6 shows the BDV and breakdown time of turn-to-turn
model under OLIW 2. As can be seen, breakdown occurred,
highly concentrated, next to the first peak of OLIW. The
average breakdown time for OLIW 1 and OLIW 2 is 1.5 μs
and 1.52 μs, respectively. However, the average breakdown
time under SLIW is 9.7 μs, almost 6 times of that under SLIW. Fig .5 Breakdown voltage of turn-to-turn model under impulse voltage
waveforms with different front time (10 layers of 50 μm insulation paper)
The reason for OLIWs having a higher BDV and much shorter
breakdown time may be as follows:
TABLE Ⅱ
AVERAGE BDV OF TURN-TO-TURN INSULATION MODEL UNDER DIFFERENT
High electric field can be generated between the two APPLIED WAVEFORMS
rectangular copper wires when impulse voltage is applied to Applied
BDV (kV)
Oscillation Relative value
turn-to-turn insulation model. This high electric field will lead waveform frequency (kHz)
2.5/50 115.2 - 0.95
to the initiation of discharge at the surface of the positive 0.78/48 127.6 - 1.05
rectangular copper wire. Then, high paritial electric field may 0.25/48 139.2 - 1.16
result in partial dischare in transformer oil which leads to OLIW 1 144.1 280 1.20
formation of microbubble and cabonization of oil and OLIW 2 151 340 1.26
insulation paper[7]. These microbubble may develop into SLIW 121.1 - 1
microbubble chains and the iniation of postive stream if the
electric field continuous to increase. Next, if the applied
voltage continuous to increase, discharge will develop along
the microbubble chains and cabonization channel of the
insulation paper until the breakdown of the whole gap. Thus,
when OLIW with a peak value similar to the BDV under
SLIW is applied to the turn-to-turn insulation model, the
discharge will be initiating and then propagating to the grand
electrode. However, before the discharge arrives at the grand
electrode, the value of applied voltage will fall into a level at
which discharge cannot develop any longer. But, when the
peak value of applied OLIW is much higher than BDV under
SLIW, the velocity of discharge development will become
much faster and then the breakdown of the entire insulation
model occurs right near the first peak. In addition, the higher
the oscillation frequency is, the faster the voltage drops after Fig .6 Breakdown voltages and time of turn-to-turn model under OLIW 2
the first peak. Therefore, OLIW with higher oscillation
frequency will result in higher BDV.
Fig. 7 shows the average breakdown time of turn-to-turn
models with 3 layers and 10 layers of 50 μm insulation paper

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 Ⅳ CONCLUSIONS
The breakdown characteristic of sphere-plate mode and
turn-to-turn insulation model under non-standard LIWs were
investigated in this paper. The following may be concluded
from experiment results:
1. BDVs increase with the decrease in front time for both
models. BDV under non-standard LIWs with steep front of
0.25 μs is 0.16 times higher than that under SLIW.
2. Turn-to-turn model could withstand higher OLIWs in
comparison to SLIW. In experiment range, BDV under
OLIWs 2 is 1.26 times of that under SLIW, and its breakdown
time is 1.5 μs which is close to the first peak of OLIWs.
Besides, a higher oscillation frequency will result in a
relatively higher BDV.
Fig .7 Average breakdown time of turn-to-turn models with 3 layers and 10 3. An interesting phenomenon that more layers for a certain
layers of 50 μm insulation paper under different front time total thickness of insulation paper will lead to an evidently
Next, turn-to-turn models with 14 layers of 50 μm insulation higher BDV under steep front non-standard LIWs and SLIW
paper and 10 layers of 80μm insulation paper were introduced was observed.
to investigate the influence of number of layers when the total In conclusion, these experiment results provide probable
thickness remained unchanged. Fig .8 shows the variation references to clarify the insulation margin between
trend of BDV and breakdown time with the increase of total non-standard LIWs or OLIWs and SLIWs.
thickness of insulation paper under SLIW and 0.25/48 μs
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