266 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 59, NO.
1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023
Study on Failure Mechanism of Oil Paper Insulation
Under Partial Discharge of Interlayer Bubble
Junjie Zhou , Qiaogen Zhang, Rui Zhang, Zhicheng Wu , Tao Wen , and Chong Guo
Abstract—Partial discharge (PD) induced by bubble will reduce
the insulation performance, lead to insulation failure and seri-
ously affect the safe operation of power transformer. Studying
the influence of PD in internal bubble on oil paper insulation
and understanding the insulation failure mechanism can provide
guidance for engineering practice. In this paper, a bubble PD
defect model is designed to obtain the mechanism of PD degrading
insulation. The inception and breakdown voltage of PD decrease
seriously with the increase of bubble area and height. Combined
with the surface state of breakdown paper observed by electron
microscope, it is concluded that PD can induce the breakdown
of oil paper insulation. Then, through the comparative analysis
of bubble area and PD parameters, a positive feedback model for
insulation degradation is obtained, representing that bubble defects
will deteriorate rapidly in exponential form under the effect of
PD. Finally, combined with the electron microscope and energy
spectrum analysis, the deterioration process of insulating paper
is divided into four stages, obtaining the micro deterioration and
failure mechanism of insulating paper. This study contributes to
understanding the mechanism of insulation failure by bubble, as
well as provides a reference for risk assessment of transformers.
Index Terms—Cumulative damage, induced breakdown, oil
paper insulation, partial discharge of bubble, positive feedback.
I. INTRODUCTION
IL paper insulation undertakes the main insulation task
O of oil-immersed power transformer [1], [2]. And with the
development of power system, the voltage level and capacity
of oil-immersed power transformer are increasing gradually,
making the oil paper insulation bears more severe stresses. Under
the effect of multiple stresses such as electricity, temperature,
mechanical vibration, environmental factors and material aging,
power transformers in long-term operation will produce bubbles
in the paper layer between insulation turns [3], [4], [5], [6]. As
the dielectric strength of gas is much lower than that of oil paper
Manuscript received 22 March 2022; revised 1 August 2022; accepted 10
September 2022. Date of publication 15 September 2022; date of current version
19 January 2023. Paper 2022-PSEC-0341.R1, presented at the 2021 IEEE 2nd
China International Youth Conference on Electrical Engineering, Chengdu,
China, Dec. 15–17, and approved for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS
ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS by the Power Systems Engineering Committee
of the IEEE Industry Applications Society. This work was supported by the
Science and Technology Project of State Grid Corporation of China under Grant
52060021002T. (Corresponding author: Qiaogen Zhang.)
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Electric Insulation and Power
Equipment, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi 710049, China (e-mail:
junjie_zhou_c@163.com; hvzhang@xjtu.edu.cn; zhang_rui@stu.xjtu.edu.cn;
z_c_wu@163.com; tao-wen@xjtu.edu.cn; 13946204699@163.com).
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insulation, bubbles bound between paper layers are very easy
to induce partial discharge (PD), which seriously threatens the
safe stable operation of power transformers [7].
The influence of bubble PD in oil paper insulation has received
extensive attention. The existence of bubbles will reduce the
insulation performance. Literature [8] concluded that air bubbles
from 100 μm to 200 μm can reduce the breakdown voltage
of insulating oil by 34% and sulfur hexafluoride bubbles can
reduce it by 19%. Usually, the internal voltage on oil paper
insulation of transformer in operation is difficult to directly
cause breakdown, instead it will induce PD in bubble, which
will degrade insulation performance gradually [9]. Therefore,
the detection and identification of PD characteristics have pro-
vided direction for judging the insulation state [10]. Lots of
research has been done on the characteristics of bubble PD,
including insulation breakdown voltage, PD inception voltage
and evolution process [11], [12]. Some research extracted the
characteristic information of PD including discharge, repetition
rate and PRPD pattern, then divided and optimized the phases
by various algorithms, which provided guidance for the identifi-
cation of insulation degradation [13]. Also, some scholars have
divided the degradation stage of insulating paper according to
the polymerization degree of insulating paper under PD [14].
However, some key issues remain unresolved. First, the size
of bubble defect in previous studies remains unchanged, which
makes the aggravating effect of long-term PD on bubble defects
unable to be reflected. In fact, the parameters of bubble change
with the development of PD, which may lead to the inconsistency
between the experimental results and the practice. Second, the
existing research studied the evolution process and other char-
acteristics of PD unilaterally, and has not linked the bubble PD
with the deterioration and failure process of insulating paper.
The relationship between the evolution of bubble PD and the
deterioration of insulating paper is unclear. Third, scant attention
has been paid to the evolution process of micro morphology on
insulating paper surface, and failed to obtain the micro mecha-
nism of insulation failure under long-term PD. Establishing the
relationship between the micro surface morphology of insulating
paper and degree of deterioration is significant to directly judge
the insulation state.
Therefore, from the perspective of breakdown and micro
damage on insulating paper, this paper analyzed the PD charac-
teristics of bubbles between oil paper insulation layers and their
influence on oil paper insulation. This research aims to reveal the
physical mechanism of bubble discharge deteriorating oil paper
insulation and evaluate its harm. The contributions are structured
ZHOU et al.: STUDY ON FAILURE MECHANISM OF OIL PAPER INSULATION UNDER PARTIAL DISCHARGE OF INTERLAYER BUBBLE
Fig. 1. PD measuring circuit.
as follows. Section Ⅱ details the experimental setup and method.
Section Ⅲ reports the experimental result of bubble PD. Section
Ⅳ carries out the discussion on two failure mechanisms. Section
Ⅴ summarizes the main contributions.
II. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND PROCEDURE
In order to obtain the failure mechanism of bubble PD on
oil paper insulation through repeated tests, the following points
need to be specially considered in the design of the experimental
system:
1) The area and height of bubble in paper layers can be ad-
justed conveniently before the experiment, and the bubble
height can be kept unchanged during the experiment.
2) The high-voltage circuit needs to be disconnected imme-
diately within milliseconds after insulation breakdown to
reduce the impact of arc discharge on the surface morphol-
ogy of insulating paper.
The details are as follows.
A. Experimental Circuit
The test circuit is shown in Fig. 1. It consists of three parts:
high voltage generating circuit, testing circuit and measuring
circuit. The electric voltage regulator is used to realize the
flexible regulation of input 50 Hz voltage, which can easily
control the rising rate and voltage stage. After the regula-
tor, the voltage is boosted by 50 kV non-PD test transformer
(25 kVA) and applying on the sample after a protective resistance
(R) of 100 kΩ. And a circuit breaker is set between the voltage
regulator and test transformer. When the sample breaks down,
the breaker can disconnect the power supply within several
milliseconds, which ensures that the surface morphology of
insulating paper will not be affected by the breakdown. The
high voltage is measured by 10000:1 resistance voltage divider
(R1 and R2 ) and displayed by oscilloscope (DPO3014200 MHz,
2.5 Gs/s). According to IEC60270, the PD signal of bubble is
obtained by pulse current method. By coupling capacitance and
impedance detection (Cp and ZM ), the system can record the
apparent charge, discharge repetition rate and PRPD patterns in
time, which is sent to the HAEFELY DDX91221b PD detector
for measurement and processing [15].
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267
Fig. 2. Bubble partial discharge model structure and setting process:
(a) schematic flow of bubble height and area control method; (b-1)∼(b-3):
actual images of test sample (c) side view schematic diagram of test sample;
(d) simulation results of electric field distribution of test sample.
For micro measurement part, Zeiss field emission electron
microscope (GeminiSEM 500) is used to observe the surface
topography of different samples. At the same time, the surface
elements of insulating paper at different damage stages are
obtained by energy spectrum analysis, and the PD characteristics
in bubbles can be analyzed from the perspective of element
content and distribution.
B. Test Cell
Before sample construction, the insulating paper and oil need
to be dried to remove moisture according to IEC 60641. The
insulating paper and insulating oil are dried in vacuum box at
105 °C and 80 °C respectively for 24 h. Then the insulating paper
is immersed in the oil and vacuum dried at 80 °C for another
24 h. Finally, stop heating and continue to maintain the vacuum
for 24 h, to make the temperature gradually decrease from 80°C
to room temperature. After drying, the construction method and
results of the test sample are shown in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2(a) shows the setting method of interlayer bubbles:
1) The ground electrode is tightly wrapped by multi-layer
Weidmann paper (relative permittivity is 4.4) whose thick-
ness is 70 μm and width is 40 mm to simulate the oil-paper
insulation structure between turns of transformer.
2) A PVC film with a specific thickness and a through hole
in the middle is placed between the paper layers to control
the distance between insulating papers.
3) A certain volume of gas is injected into the through hole
by microinjector.
4) The size of unit pixel is calculated according to the 40 mm
width of insulating paper and the number of image pixels,
and then the area of bubble is obtained according to the
number of pixels of bubble.
5) Multiply the calculated area by the thickness of PVC and
compare it with the injection volume. If the difference
between the two is less than 5%, it can be considered
that the area and height of bubbles have been accurately
controlled. Otherwise, the sample structure needs to be
adjusted.
Based on the above sample preparation method, Fig. 2(b-1) to
Fig. 2(b-3) are the images of sample with no bubble, small bubble
268 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023

and large bubble respectively, which shows that bubbles are

bound between the insulating paper layers, forming multilayer
structure of insulating paper, oil and bubble. Fig. 2(c) is the
diagram of side view, which further shows the structure of the test
sample, that is, bubble is added between the wrapped multilayer
insulating paper. Finally, a two-dimensional axisymmetric simu-
lation model of the electrode system is established by COMSOL
simulation software, and the electric field distribution in the
sample is obtained, as shown in Fig. 2(d). where R is the radius
of the disk bubble, H is the height of the bubble, D is the gap Fig. 3. Withstand characteristics: (a) influence of bubble area on PDIV and
distance, and the applied voltage in the model is 10 kV. Taking BV. (b) Effect of bubble height on BE at two voltage raising rates.
bubble with radius of 10 mm, height of 0.4 mm and height of 0.8
mm as example, the distribution of electric field in the sample
of the area. The highest breakdown voltage in a small area
and the electric field non-uniformity coefficient corresponding
decreases from above 15 kV to about 4 kV in a large area. And
to different height and radius are obtained through electrostatic
the larger the area, the closer the PDIV is to the BV. As the bubble
field simulation.
height increases, BE also decreases rapidly from 14 kV/mm to 7
kV/mm. There is little difference in BE under different voltage
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULT rising rates, and the maximum difference on BE is less than
A. Breakdown Characteristics of Oil-paper Insulation 6.56%.
This is explained as follows: PD in bubbles induces oil-paper
The existence of bubbles will affect the voltage withstand
insulation breakdown. For the bubble area, charges will accumu-
capacity of oil paper insulation. Studies on the influence of
late on the surfaces at both ends of the bubble, which enhances
bubble size on breakdown characteristics of oil paper insulation
the space electric field in the oil gap [18], [19]. And with the
and quantitatively obtaining the variation laws of breakdown
increase of area, the repetition rate of PD also increases, which
voltage of oil paper insulation with different bubble area and
is equivalent to increasing the number of inductions. Therefore,
height are significant in understanding the threat of bubbles [16],
it’s more likely to cause streamer discharge in the oil gap, which
[17]. Therefore, this paper studied the short-time breakdown
lead to the whole insulation breakdown. In a word, when the
characteristics of oil paper insulation by step-up method, and the
area increases to a certain extent, PD can induce breakdown
voltage withstand characteristics of oil paper insulation under
once it starts. For the bubble height, the higher the height,
bubble defects with different area and height are obtained.
the stronger the electric field in the bubble, and the inception
First, it’s necessary to obtain and eliminate the influence of
probability of PD is greater. After the bubble PD occurs, all
PVC film. In pre-experiments, the voltage is increased at the rate
voltage is on the remaining oil paper insulation. Therefore, the
of 1 kV/s without bubble and only adding PVC film. The results
higher the bubble, the greater the voltage borne by the remain-
show that there is no PD inception under the voltage of 25 kV.
ing oil paper insulation, which are easier to cause breakdown.
What’s more, no PD incepts and the insulation performance is
For the interpretation of the voltage rising rate, PD has been
intact under 25 kV for 30 min. The applied voltage is much
generated at different rising rates before breakdown, which can
higher than that of formal experiments. Therefore, it can be
provide enough initial electrons for the breakdown of the whole
concluded that within the range of experimental voltage, PVC
insulation. The breakdown delay of the whole insulation does
film has no effect on the results and PD only occurs in the bubble
not consider the initial electron generation time delay, and the
defects.
breakdown delay decreases, which can reduce the difference of
Then in the formal experiment, the geometric parameters of
breakdown voltage under different rising rates. Therefore, the
bubbles and voltage rising rate in the experiment are changed.
rising rate has little effect on the breakdown electric field.
Under bubble height of 0.5 mm, electrode distance of 2 mm and
Based on the influence of area and height on the breakdown,
volage rising rate of 0.5 kV/2 min, the variation of breakdown
it can be found that the breakdown of oil-paper insulation is
voltage (BV) and partial discharge inception voltage (PDIV)
induced by PD in the bubble in the process of voltage rise. The
with different bubble area is obtained. Then, in order to obtain
larger the area and the higher the height, the easier the PD is to
the short-time breakdown characteristics of oil-paper insulation
induce the breakdown of the overall insulation at a lower voltage
under the influence of bubble height, the variation curve of oil-
and the harm of PD to the insulation is more significant.
paper insulation breakdown electric field (BE) is obtained by
changing the bubble height under the two voltage rising rates of
0.5 kV/10 s and 0.5 kV/2 min, keeping the area of 40 mm2 and the B. Positive Feedback Mechanism of Oil-paper Insulation
gap distance of 2 mm unchanged. where BE can be obtained by Failure.
multiplying the BV measured by experiments by the electric field 1) Basic Phenomenon of PD: Bubble defects in transformers
non-uniformity coefficient calculated by COMSOL simulation. may withstand constant voltage for a long time. Under constant
The experimental results are shown in Fig. 3. voltage, the process of bubble PD is accompanied by the change
Results show that in the experimental area range, the break- of energy. The main characterization parameters for PD are
down voltage of the bubble decreases sharply with the increase discharge per second (Q) and discharge repetition rate per second

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ZHOU et al.: STUDY ON FAILURE MECHANISM OF OIL PAPER INSULATION UNDER PARTIAL DISCHARGE OF INTERLAYER BUBBLE
Fig. 4. Evolution of discharge Q and repetition rate N under constant voltage.
Fig. 5. Evolution of PRPD pattern. (a) initial stage. (b) transition stage.
(c) beginning of stable stage. (d) later stage of stable stage.
(N). The Q is the average value of apparent charge per unit time,
and the N is the number of PDs per unit time. Combined with
the literature and the experimental research in this paper, it is
found that the development process of bubble PD can be divided
into three stages: initial stage, transition stage and stable stage
[20], [21], [22]. Typical evolution of PD characteristic in the
experiment is shown in Fig. 4.
Results show that Q increases gradually at first, drops sud-
denly after several minutes, and then increases slowly with time
after entering the stable discharge stage. The N tends to a large
value in the initial stage and gradually decreases in the transition
stage. After a few minutes of transition, it rises suddenly and
finally rises steadily. In a word, the Q and N changed suddenly
in different stages, and the repeated experiments showed the
same trend.
PRPD pattern is also a critical method containing lots of
characteristic information of PD. Corresponding to the four
positions: (a), (b), (c) and (d) in Fig. 4, take 1 min PD data to build
PRPD pattern. The results are shown in Fig. 5. Where the vertical
axis represents the discharge Q, the horizontal axis represents
the voltage phase, and the legend represents the density of
discharges.
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269
Fig. 6. Evolution of bubble area: decreases first due to oxygen consumption,
and then increases due to PD gas production.
The results show that there has large Q in the reverse phase of
the voltage at initial stage, while the Q in other phase is basically
stable, forming the form shown in Fig. 5(a). During the transition
stage, the Q gradually increases and the number of PD with low
Q value is reduced, as shown in Fig. 5(b). Fig. 5(c) shows that
when PD just entered the stable period, the Q decreased and the
N increased sharply. The PD becomes dense in low discharge
area. Fig. 5(d) shows the PRPD pattern after entering the stable
period for a period of time. A high-density band of PD appears
in the middle of the PRPD pattern. Then the shape of PRPD
pattern will not change until the insulation breakdown.
Subsequent studies will mainly focus on the long-term cu-
mulative degradation effect of insulating paper when PD is
in stable stage, to obtain the mechanism of insulation failure
caused by long-term bubble PD. In the experiment, keeping the
bubble height unchanged, the bubble area can change with gas
consumption or generation under bubble PD. The bubble area is
used to characterize the degree of defect deterioration, and the
discharge Q is used to characterize the severity of PD. Combined
with bubble area and Q, a positive feedback mechanism of the
interaction between defect deterioration and PD intensification
under long-term PD can be obtained.
2) Gas Production Rate: During the evolution of PD in stable
stage, a common phenomenon has been found, which is that a
large amount of gas is generated in the process of bubble PD,
and the gas accumulates between the oil-paper insulation layers,
affecting the bubble area. This may be one of the reasons for the
intensification of PD. In the experiments, the height of bubble
is 0.2 mm, the gap distance is 2 mm, and the applied voltage
is 9 kV. The bubble area is recorded at regular intervals in the
experiment. Fig. 6 shows the change curve of bubble area.
Results show that the area of bubbles decreases at first. This
can be explained as follows: the gas used in the experiment is
air, and the proportion of bubble area decrease is 22.45%, which
is exactly the proportion of oxygen in air. Therefore, the reason
of bubble area decrease is that when PD transits from the initial
stage to stable stage, oxygen will be consumed continuously,
and the oxygen consumption rate is greater than gas generation
rate, causing the bubble area decreasing continuously [17].
270 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023
Fig. 7. Variation of PD apparent charge Q with time.
After all oxygen is consumed, the experimental result shows
that the increase of area conforms to the exponential curve.
The abscissa of the experimental point is substituted into
the fitting curve to obtain the corresponding fitting value and
the Pearson correlation coefficient between the fitting value and
the experimental value is 0.9969. Compared with the correlation
coefficient of linear fitting of 0.9888, it can be concluded that
exponential fitting is the best fitting method. Equation (1) is
obtained by exponential fitting curve.
A = 65.66e0.00702t
where t is the time, in minutes, A is the area, in mm2 . The gas
production rate is positively correlated with the area of existing
gas. And the coefficient of t indicates that 7.02 μL of gas will
be produced per milliliter of gas in one minute.
3) Positive Feedback Mechanism: Combined with the evolu-
tion process of bubble PD, this paper mainly studies the change
process of PD parameters in the stable stage, and takes the Q
as the main research object. The discharge Q represents the
energy released by each PD, and its increase can fully reflect
the continuous deterioration of insulation. In a large number of
experiments, it is found that under the condition of long-term
constant voltage, the apparent charge of PD will continue to rise
with time, and presents an upward trend similar to exponent,
which is the same as the change trend of bubble area. The
discharge corresponding to the area change in Fig. 6 is fitted
exponentially and the results are shown in Fig. 7 and (2).
Q = 0.177e0.00652t
±Q = πε0 b2 [1 + εr (K (a/b) − 1)] ΔE
where Q is the apparent charge, in nC, t is the time, in min.
The b represents the bubble diameter, a is the height, K(a/b) is
a constant related to a and b.
By comparing (1) and (2), it can be seen that both are in
good agreement with the exponential fitting trend, and their
exponential coefficients are very close, less than 7.13%. And
the calculation formula of charge is given in the literature [24],
as shown in (3). The Q has a linear relationship with the bubble
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Fig. 8. Verification of linear relationship between bubble area and discharge
Q. (a) discharge. (b) relationship.
area. Therefore, it can be considered that the increase of Q is
closely related to the change of bubble area.
In order to verify the linear relationship between bubble area
and discharge Q, further experiments are carried out in this
paper. Three typical bubble areas, 20 mm2 , 40 mm2 and 70
mm2 respectively, are selected to carry out the constant voltage
long-term PD experiment under the voltage of 7 kV. The results
of the change of Q with time are shown in Fig. 8(a). Select four
time points in the initial stage and stable stage of PD process,
including 2 min, 45 min, 90 min and 135 min, and calculate the
average value of 200 data points nearby as the value of Q at that
time. The results are plotted in Fig. 8(b) and fitted linearly.
The results further prove that the linear relationship between
Q and bubble area is significant. The correlation coefficient
between them is 0.9934 in the initial stage and 0.8990 in the
(1) stable stage. Therefore, it can be concluded that the apparent
charge Q of PD in interlayer bubble has a linear relationship with
the bubble area, which means that the bubble area determines
the severity of PD.
The above studies have shown the positive feedback interac-
tion between gas area and PD. Bubble PD will continuously
produce gas and increase the bubble area, and the increase
of bubble area will further promote the development of PD.
The mathematical model of positive feedback mechanism is as
follows. In the model, it is assumed that the growth rate of bubble
area is directly proportional to the area, and the proportional
coefficient is set to k. The differential equation shown in (4) can
be obtained. The variation function of area with time shown in
(5) can be obtained by solving the differential equation, where
c is the undetermined coefficient. From the linear relationship
between discharge Q and area, the function of Q with time can
be obtained, where C is the product of the linear coefficient of
Q and area and the coefficient of (5). Finally, the insulation de-
(2) terioration mode characterized by discharge Q can be expressed
as (6).
(3)
dA
= kA (4)
dt
A = cekt
Q = Cekt (5)
The established model indicates the deterioration of insulation
through the increase of Q. The change trend of the function is
consistent with the experimental results, which indicates that
ZHOU et al.: STUDY ON FAILURE MECHANISM OF OIL PAPER INSULATION UNDER PARTIAL DISCHARGE OF INTERLAYER BUBBLE
Fig. 9. SEM image of non-damaged paper.
Fig. 10. SEM image of induced breakdown paper: breakdown point.
the model is correct, that is, the gas production rate of PD is
positively correlated with the bubble area. Therefore, it can be
seen that as long as bubbles appear in the oil-paper insulation,
the internal PD will continue to intensify exponentially, and the
insulation will eventually fail through the mechanism of positive
feedback.
C. Microscopic Study on the Effect of Partial Discharge on Oil
Paper Insulation
1) SEM Analysis: Cellulose is the main component of insu-
lating paper and will be modified under the effect of electric,
heat and other stress, which will seriously reduce the insulation
capacity. The macroscopic characteristics of oil paper insula-
tion failure have been studied in previous sections. Next, the
damage of bubble PD to insulating paper is analyzed from the
microscopic point of view, in order to obtain the mechanism of
insulation failure.
First, the surface of insulating paper without PD is observed,
and the images with magnification of 200 times and 5000 times
are obtained, as shown in Fig. 9. It can be seen that without the
effect of PD, the surface of insulating paper is relatively flat, the
fibers are dense and the structure of the whole fiber is compact
without defects. And there are lots of fiber filaments on the
surface of fiber that can be observed at the large magnification.
As shown in Fig. 10, for the insulating paper after bubble PD
induced breakdown, the surface structure of the insulating paper
was observed at 100 times and 2500 times magnification. It can
be seen that the main fiber is completely broken, and there is a
breakdown hole in the middle, with a diameter of about hundreds
of microns, while the surrounding insulating paper basically
undamaged. This further proves that the induced breakdown may
be caused by the streamer discharge in the oil gap, resulting in the
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271
Fig. 11. SEM images of paper surface under PD effect: four stages.
failure of the insulating paper when the insulation performance
is not degraded much, which is consistent with Section A.
While the PD effects on the insulating paper for a long
time without breakdown, the insulating paper will deteriorate
continuously in the long-term discharge. According to the dam-
age degree of insulating paper, the continuous deterioration of
insulating paper can be divided into four stages as shown in
Fig. 11.
Fig. 11 shows the typical surface morphology of insulating
paper in four damage stages under different magnification.
Fig. 11(a) to Fig. 11(c) include SEM images magnified by 1000
times and 5000 times respectively and Fig. 11(d) shows images
magnified by 200 times and 1000 times respectively. In the
first stage of Fig. 11(a), the fine fibers in the insulating paper
have disappeared, leaving only the coarser fiber, and the surface
of the coarser fiber has become flatter, which shows that the
energy of PD is low and only destroys fine fibers at first. The
main sign of the second stage is surface roughing as shown in
Fig. 11(b). the surface of the insulating paper and the thicker
272 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023

Fig. 12. Proportion of elements on the surface of insulating paper.

TABLE I
ELEMENT PROPORTION
Fig. 13. Element line distribution image: (a) undamaged paper. (b) paper under
PD effect.

connecting fibers began to crystallize and the main fibers and

the thicker connecting fibers between the main fibers appeared
spherical protrusions as shown in the yellow coil, which means
that the long-term cumulative damage effect of PD begins to
appear. In Fig. 11(c) for the third stage, the surface of the
insulating fiber is further roughened. The coarser fibers have also
broken and the fracture is spherical crystal. The fiber damage
of insulating paper is further aggravated In Fig. 11(d) for the
fourth stage, the surface of insulating paper began to become flat
with the intensification of crystallization, the pores and the fiber
structure have basically disappeared. And the crack channels
have appeared on the surface of insulating paper.
2) EDS Analysis: In order to further analyze the causes and Fig. 14. Element plane distribution image: (a) undamaged insulating paper.
(b) paper under PD effect. where different colored points represent different
components of crystallization and study the physical and chem- elements and distributions.
ical changes on the surface of insulating paper, the distribution
of elements on the surface of insulating paper were studied by
energy spectrum analysis. The line distribution of element on Result in Fig. 13 shows that the distribution of carbon and
the surface of insulating paper is shown in Fig. 12 and Table Ⅰ oxygen on both undamaged and damaged paper is uniform.
shows the proportion of carbon and oxygen. Comparing the element content and distribution of insulating
The peaks in the Fig. 12 show the contents of carbon and paper before and after PD, it can be concluded that the insulating
oxygen respectively. Platinum is an impurity element introduced paper is carbonized continuously with the development of PD.
due to the need for gold spraying during observation, which can The insulation capacity of carbonized insulating paper decreases
be ignored. According to the results in Fig. 12 and Table I, it seriously due to the looseness of the structure and the reduction
shows that under the effect of PD for a long time, the proportion of strength, which can lead to breakdown of oil paper insulation.
of carbon and oxygen in insulating paper has changed greatly: Finally, the surface distribution of carbon and oxygen ele-
the proportion of carbon has increased by 11.53%, while the ments on the surface of insulating paper before and after damage
proportion of oxygen has decreased by about 11.53%. is further analyzed by EDS analysis. The results are shown in Fig
Ten different positions of the damaged paper are randomly 14, in which Fig. 14(a) shows the sampling area and distribution
selected for EDS analysis in line to obtain surface elements results of carbon and oxygen on undamaged insulating paper,
distribution of insulating paper under effect of bubble PD and and Fig. 14(b) shows the corresponding results of damaged
Fig. 13 is representative. Fig. 13(a) represents undamaged paper insulating paper. From the element plane distribution, it can be
while Fig. 13(b) is the damaged. seen that the surface elements of insulating paper before and

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ZHOU et al.: STUDY ON FAILURE MECHANISM OF OIL PAPER INSULATION UNDER PARTIAL DISCHARGE OF INTERLAYER BUBBLE
Fig. 15. Induced breakdown process.
after damage of PD are also evenly distributed, which further
strengthens the conclusion that PD in bubble causes uniform
damage to the surface of insulating paper.
IV. DISCUSSION
Above all, the short-time breakdown characteristics and pos-
itive feedback mechanism of oil paper insulation are studied,
the surface morphology and element content distribution of
insulating paper under long-time PD is analyzed, and the basic
process and principle of insulating paper damage and breakdown
under micro are obtained. According to the above results, two
physical mechanisms of oil paper insulation breakdown are
proposed in this paper.
First, bubble PD can induce the breakdown of the whole oil
paper insulation gap. As shown in Fig. 15, the PD of bubble
can accumulate charges on the surface of insulating paper [13].
These accumulated charges are easy to become the initial elec-
trons causing gap breakdown, and the space electric field formed
by the accumulated charges enhances the electric field in the
oil gap, making the gap more likely to break through under the
effect. When the charge accumulates to a certain extent, the weak
part in the oil gap may develop into streamer discharge, resulting
in the breakdown of the whole gap. Generally, the induced
breakdown probability increases with the increase of bubble
defects, which is the reason for the formation of short-time
breakdown characteristics of oil paper insulation.
Second, bubble PD accumulated damage to insulating pa-
per and cause breakdown [22]. From the positive feedback
mechanism, the cumulative damage will be faster and faster.
Fig. 16 shows the whole damage process of insulating paper.
The PD electrons bombard the surface of the insulating paper
continuously at first. Due to the dense structure of insulating
paper, only the exposed hydroxyl and methyl groups on the
insulating paper surface will be damaged. And for some fine
fibers in voids, the ether bond on the sugar ring may also be
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273
Fig. 16. Cumulative damage process of insulating paper.
damaged. Therefore, the first stage of insulating paper dam-
age is that the fiber filaments scattered in insulating paper are
ablated and disappeared. With the increase of time, the elec-
trons produced by PD begin to destroy the internal structure of
cellulose, making most sugar ring begin to break. Therefore,
the fiber surface in insulating paper began to be damaged and
roughened, which can be considered as the second stage. In third
stage, the damage of insulation paper caused by PD reaches
a certain degree, destroyed the polymer structure of cellulose.
Therefore, crystalline substances begin to appear on the surface
of insulating paper. And the thicker connecting fibers will break
and form crystalline fracture. Finally, based on the destruction
of polymer structure, PD will consume oxygen element faster,
resulting in the continuous appearance of carbonized crystals
on the surface of insulating paper. As a result, the surface of the
insulating paper is completely covered with fine crystals, and
the whole surface is carbonized and loose. In this process, the
insulation capacity of insulating paper continues to decline.
In conclusion, the electrons generated by PD will interact
with insulating paper, destroy the chemical bond of cellulose
and consume oxygen element, resulting in the carbonization of
insulating paper and eventually lead to insulation failure.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the characteristics of insulation short-time
breakdown under the influence of height and area are studied.
Then, the relationship between gas production and development
of PD is analyzed, and the positive feedback failure mechanism
of insulation under long-time PD is obtained. Finally, the micro
morphology, element content and distribution of insulating pa-
per under different damage states are analyzed, and the micro
mechanism of insulation failure is studied. The summary is as
follows:
1) The short-time breakdown voltage of insulation decreases
significantly with the deterioration of bubble defects and
gradually approaches the inception voltage of PD.
2) The gas production rate of PD is directly proportional to
the bubble size. The increase of bubble will aggravate the
PD. The positive feedback between them makes the PD
develop exponentially, resulting in rapid insulation failure.
274 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 59, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023

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ZHOU et al.: STUDY ON FAILURE MECHANISM OF OIL PAPER INSULATION UNDER PARTIAL DISCHARGE OF INTERLAYER BUBBLE 275

Zhicheng Wu was born in China. He received the
Ph.D. degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an,
China, in 2020. He is currently an Assistant Professor
with Xi’an Jiaotong University. He mainly engaged
in research on improvement of insulation reliability
of GIS/GIL equipment, preparation, and development
of electrical epoxy materials.
Chong Guo was born in China, in 1992. He received
the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering
from the Harbin University of Science and Technol-
ogy, Harbin, China, in 2015 and 2018, respectively.
He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree
with Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China. His
main research focuses on measurement and oil-paper
insulation of transformers.

Tao Wen was born in Shaanxi, China, in 1990. He

received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an,
China, in 2012 and 2017, respectively. His main re-
search interests include pulse power technology, gas
discharge, and its applications.

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