Aging Behaviour & Resistance

of Ceramic Insulator

Markku Ruokanen, ITG Group Research & Design and Quality Director
Erik Lehmann, Linear Assets, 50Hertz Transmission GmbH
Content
1. Introduction

2. What is aging?

3. Aging mechanism of Ceramic Materials

 What are the typical material defects causing the crack nucleation and growth in
ceramic materials?

4. Assessment of 33-year-old C-120 porcelain Long Rods

5. Discussion & Conclusions

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 1. Introduction
Electric energy supply security and availability is a
strategic topic for all Transmission Systems
Operators (TSO): our society support less and less
blackouts and the potential consequences are more
and more serious and expensive than ever.
Aging is a creeping risk factor for a potential
Transmission System failure and needs to be
monitored permanently.

Aging mechanism are multiple and often complex

making the estimation of remining lifetime very
difficult.

To tackle this challenge Cigré Working Group B2.03

has published the technical brochure 306 with
multiple reference cases to estimate the remaining
life-time of ceramic and glass insulators.
Scenario F3 from Cigré TB 306, where the solid
line presents failing “as arrived” and the
dashed/dotted line after the TMP testing.

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 2. What is aging ?
All materials are aging.

Aging of the materials refers to the gradual process

in which the material properties, structure or
systems, changes, normally degrades, over time
and/or use.
On the reliability engineering the Bathtub curb of
failures is divided in 3 specific zones:
• “Infant mortality”, normally related to material
defects passing the critical threshold size.
• “Random Failures”, root cause is often a
combination of subcritical defects and servicing
conditions.
• “Wear Out Failures”, the zone, where the
subcritical defects are generally grown to big
enough to cause logarithmically increasing Bathtub Curb about materials failures over time,
failure rate. the yellow line presents the aging.

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 3. Aging Mechanism of Ceramic Materials
In a simplified way it can be said that ceramic aging is
principally crack nucleation and sub-critical crack
propagation leading loss of mechanical strength.

The micro-cracks might be originally from the firing

process, or they can be initiated in service close to
material impurities, porosity or other non-homogeneity
where the cumulated stresses are passing locally the
crack intensity factor (KI0) threshold.

The KI must pass a threshold KI0 to initiate crack

growth. In the region I the crack speed obeys
exponential equation. For ceramic material regions II
and III takes only a negligible time, failure is imminent
so region I is relevant for the lifetime prediction. Schematic sub- critical crack growth development
as presented by Jan Schulte-Fischedick et al.
analysed in their 2019- 2020 LeKI-Report.

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3. What are the typical material defects
causing the crack nucleation and growth
in ceramic materials?
Quartz
Residual quartz will cause micro-cracks by the (βα)
transition at + 573°C, which causes about 0,7 vol%
volume shrinkage during the cooling.
The material can support this if the grains are small
enough, but the large grains will not withstand the
tension and will develop microcracks, which then
reduces the porcelain strength.
There is a debate about the critical quartz size
threshold and different authors propose different sizes:
10 μm, 20 μm, and 50 μm. The reality is probably
around 20 μm depending the rest of the Quartz initiated crack growth in a long rod.
microstructure. Quartz content > 2%

Quartz is controlled by the body recipe and firing curb .

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3. What are the typical material defects
causing the crack nucleation and growth
in ceramic materials?
Porosity
There is always porosity in ceramic materials, but
modern alumina porcelains C-120 and C-130 are tight
fired and doesn't have any open porosity.
Open porosity allows moisture absorption, which can
initiate cracks when frozen.
The porosity is controlled by the correct recipe,
extrusion compression and firing curb.

C-130 fragments after porosity test, no porosity

observed

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3. What are the typical material defects
causing the crack nucleation and growth
in ceramic materials?
“Hard Particles”
“Hard Particle” is an agglomeration of dry raw
material particles strongly compressed in the
manufacturing process.
The origin can be the long-time warehousing or
residual dried body remains at extruder, e.g., at
nozzle or expansion chamber joints.
Hard Particle controls includes the slurry sieving
before filter presses and preventive maintenance
for the extruders.
Insulators with hard particles above critical
particle size are efficiently eliminated by 100 % Tiny hard-particle close to surface is the
routine bending or tensile testing. position of the initial crack nucleation.

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3. What are the typical material defects
causing the crack nucleation and growth
in ceramic materials?
“Iron Particle”
“Iron Particle” or “”Black Dot” is any foreign
particle on the body mass, often iron where the
name is coming, but can be other type as well,
rust, dirt etc.
The origin can be raw material quality or
contamination, external dirt, aging and wearing of
the manufacturing equipment.
Iron Particle controls includes magnets on slurry
pipes and the slurry sieving before filter presses.
General equipment preventive maintenance and
shopfloor cleaning. Tiny “Iron Particle” on a breakage surface on a
Insulators with Iron above critical particle size destructive testing. Clearly visible and can be
identified the origin of the crack nucleation.
particle size are efficiently eliminated by 100 %
routine bending or tensile testing.
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3. What are the typical material defects
causing the crack nucleation and growth
in ceramic materials?
“Core and Surface Crack”
Core and Surface Crack can be divided in two
main categories:
• Drying cracks, caused by too fast drying not
allowing moisture to get out smoothly
• Firing Cracks, caused by too high temperature
gradient inside the body.
Both types are having multiple secondary
parameters on the root-cause three.
Controlled by drying and firing curb monitoring. Small surface crack caused by drying; the glaze
has penetrated the crack and sealed it at firing.
Critical cracks are efficiently eliminated by 100 % The mechanical strength is not affected
routine bending or tensile testing. significantly, but as non-homogeneity it is the
place where the stresses are cumulating.

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4. Assessment of 33-Year-old C-120 Porcelain Long Rods.
50 Hertz selected 72 samples of 75/21/105 TB
and 75/25/105 TB long rods long from two
different suppliers to be assessed according
Cigré TB 306.
The Thermo-Mechanical Performance (TMP) was
replaced by Thermal Cycling test because of the
limited TMP test capacity.
The batch was divided in two sub-batches and
after the routine tensile test one sub-batch was
tested to breakage as received and other passed
the thermal cycle before breakage test.
The failing load is normally distributed and doesn’t
show any measurable aging.
Failure load diagram according to Cigré TB 306,
corresponds most closely scenario F 1.b showing no
statistically measurable aging.

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4. Assessment of 33-Year-old C-120 Porcelain Long Rods.
The Failure Analysis
It was observed that 60 of the insulators failed at
the cap on the tensile test. This presents 83 % of
the failures and explains directly why the thermal
cycling didn't cause any further aging between the
two sub-groups.
Confirms that ceramic doesn’t show aging on
these insulators as the cast iron was the weakest
point.

Typical Long rod cap failure at tensile testing.

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4. Assessment of 33-Year-old C-120 Porcelain Long Rods.
The Failure Analysis Failure Mode Qty
Quartz 0
The 12 Insulators where the breakage was on ceramic body, were
inspected for the root cause. Porosity 0
4 different root causes were identified as on the table. Hard Particles 1
Not identified 3 failure modes were probably caused by a particle Iron Particle 1
which disappeared at the moment of the brakeage. Surface Cracks 4
Core Cracks 3
Not identified 3

The Mineralogical analysis was Suppl. Quartz Corundum Cristobalite Mullit Rest. (SiO2)
executed. Both suppliers are having a
C-120 with very high Corundum A < 2% 39 % < 2% 12 49
content, which explains partially the
good field performance of these B < 2% 50 % < 2% 7 43
insulators.
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 4. Assessment of 33-Year-old C-120 Porcelain Long Rods.
It was pure hazard that of the observed 12
ceramic failures, 7 were broken as received and
5 after thermal cycle.
The as received were having an average failure
load of 159 kN, which is aligned with the failure
load of the 60 Cast Iron Cap failures average
161 kN.
The 5 insulators submitted to Thermal Cycling
were failing in average at 146 kN.
Statistically this is not significative, but it is
suggesting that the thermal cycle has caused
accelerated aging and reduced 9 % of the
mechanical strength of these 5 insulators having Failure load diagram according to Cigré TB 306, with
identified material defects discussed earlier. ceramic failures only, now it looks like a scenario F5.

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4. Assessment of 33-Year-old C-120 Porcelain Long Rods.

 The study shows that an assessment of the old long rod insulators should always be
accompanied by failure mode and mineralogical analysis; pure statistical approach could
lead to wrong conclusions of the remaining life-time.

 The results are suggesting that, when the ceramic is already having non-homogeneity and
defects bigger than the critical threshold, the thermal cycling alone is enough causing the
accelerated aging by crack propagation. In that sense Thermal Cycling could replace TMP,
when life-time estimations are done for long rods.

 When non-homogeneity and defects (quartz, hard particles, voids, iron particles, cracks)
are smaller than the critical threshold this alumina porcelain insulator batch is not showing
measurable aging after 33 years field service, which is clearly better performance then
excepted.

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5. Discussion & Conclusions
 We can observe, that this batch of C-120 long
rod insulators manufactured in late 80’s are
overperforming in aging resistance, when
compared to field performance studies based on
insulators manufactured 60’s and 70’s.
This suggest has there has been significative
improvements on the raw-material purity and
manufacturing technologies in between, which
have been reducing the quantity and size of the
typical material defects.
If we now look again at Freese & Pohlman
Statistical Long Rod life-time assessment by Freese
graph, we see that in this study the mechanical and Pohlman in 1999.
performance after 33 years’ service is much
better then proposed in 1999, and the “35-years”
gaussian should be moved more on right-hand
side.

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Thank you for you attention!

Questions?