CONTENTS:INTRODUCTION INTERNAL SHORT CIRCUIT FAULT MODEL DETERIORATING INSULATION MODEL IMPLEMENTATION AND SIMULATION RESULTS CONCLUSION REFERENCES

ABSTRACT:Incipient fault detection in transformers can provide early warning of electrical failure and could prevent catastrophic losses. To develop transformer incipient fault detection technique, a transformer model to simulate internal incipient faults is required. This paper presents a methodology to model internal incipient winding faults in distribution transformers. These models were implemented by combining deteriorating insulation models with an internal short circuit fault model. The internal short circuit fault model was developed using finite element analysis. The deteriorating insulation model, including an aging model and an arcing model connected in parallel, was developed based on the physical behaviour of aging insulation and the arcing phenomena occurring when the insulation was severely damaged. The characteristics of the incipient faults from the simulation were compared with those from some potential experimental incipient fault cases. The comparison showed the experimentally obtained characteristics of terminal behaviours of the faulted transformer were similar to the simulation results from the incipient fault models.

I. INTRODUCTION:INTERNAL winding faults resulting from the degradation of transformer winding insulation can be catastrophic and hence expensive. In the new environment of deregulation, utilities therefore need inexpensive methods employed to detect such faults in the incipient stage. However, the implementations of the existing monitoring methods tend to cost too much to be applied to distribution transformers. Therefore, an ongoing project in the Power Systems Automation Laboratory (PSAL) of Texas A&M University is to develop an on-line incipient fault detection method for single-phase distribution transformers that utilizes the terminal parameters of voltages and currents. Several transformer models have been developed for the study of transformers with internal short circuit winding faults and some research work on the representation of Insulation material was done in the past. However, none of them discussed how to simulate an internal incipient fault in transformers. This presents a new methodology developed to model internal incipient winding faults in distribution transformers based on the authors earlier work. This method contains a degrading insulation model and a transformer internal short circuit fault model. Since deteriorating insulation involves two stages aging and arcing, the degrading insulation model is composed of an aging model and an arcing model connected in parallel. The degrading insulation model was combined with the internal short circuit model, developed in our earlier work, to simulate internal winding incipient faults. The transformer internal incipient fault model was implemented using commercially available finite element analysis software. Various incipient fault scenarios at different degrading levels of the transformer winding insulation were simulated. In these fault scenarios, the terminal voltages and currents of the transformer were analyzed in both time domain and frequency domain.

II. INTERNAL SHORT CIRCUIT FAULT MODEL

A method was developed to apply finite element analysis to calculate the parameters for an equivalent circuit of the transformer with an internal short circuit fault using ANSOFTs Maxwell Software. The 2-D Magneto static solver in the package was used to compute the model of the transformer and export an equivalent circuit in the format of SPICE sub circuits. Using finite element analysis to solve problems involves three stages. The first step consists of meshing the problem space into contiguous elements of suitable geometry and assigning appropriate values of the material parameters like conductivity, permeability, and permittivity to each element. Since an object with permeability equal to 1 in a magnetic model does not need to be modelled, the insulation between the turns and layers were ignored completely. The core was represented by a rectangle with two windows. The nonlinear characteristics of the core were input manually into the solver and assigned to the core. To model an internal fault on the primary or secondary winding, the faulted winding is divided into two sub coils a and b(turn-to-earth fault) or three sub coils a, b, and c

Fig. 1.Transformer model to simulate an internal fault.

(turn-to-turn fault). The primary winding and the secondary windings are represented by polygons of corresponding materials. For instance, to simulate a turn-to-earth fault on the primary winding, the transformer is modelled as shown in the Fig. 1(a). The primary winding is divided into two subcoils a and b. The transformer model to simulate a turn-to-turn fault between two turns on the primary winding is represented as shown in Fig. 1(b). The primary winding is divided into three coils, a, b, and c. Second, the model has to be excited to set up the initial conditions. Since the subcoil with the maximum number of turns contributes more in the magnetic field, the current source is input into that subcoil and all the other coils are open-circuit. In the above example, since subcoil b in Fig. 1(a) and subcoil c in Fig. 1(b) represent more turns, respectively, they are energized by the current source. Finally, the boundary conditions for the problem have to be specified. Balloon boundary is adopted in the simulation. Balloon boundaries model the region outside the drawing space as being nearly infinitely large; thus, it can effectively isolate the model from other voltage sources. In post-processing, the calculated parameters can be exported into a SPICE subcircuit based on field solutions created in the Maxwell 2-D field solver. The equivalent circuit derived from the finite element analysis is displayed as a black box with a set of interface terminals. The internal faults are simulated by shorting the two terminals or connecting one terminal to the ground. To simulate an incipient internal winding fault, a model of degraded insulation before breakdown replaced the switch between two turns to model an incipient internal winding fault.

III. DETERIORATING INSULATION MODEL:The deteriorating insulation between the turns is a major cause of incipient internal winding faults in transformers. During the operation of the transformer, a strong electric field is applied to the dielectric material. It can result in the aging and deterioration of the insulation. The relevant factors generally recognized as causing the aging and deterioration of insulation include thermal stresses, electrical stresses, mechanical stresses, moisture, and so on. Thermal stresses are caused by the internal heating due to current overloads plus ambient temperatures. Electrical stresses are caused by the voltage gradient in the insulation. Under normal operating conditions, high voltage gradients below the breakdown voltage do not cause detectable aging. Mechanical stresses are caused by assembly configurations, manufacturing techniques, centrifugal forces and vibration. Moisture is another major cause of lowered dielectric properties. It can form a conductive path on the surfaces of material or react with the material to cause chemical reversion. The structure of a dielectric may be altered significantly during the aging process, and these changes will affect the electrical properties of the dielectric even before insulation failure occurs. The relaxation processes a dielectric undergoes, and hence the characteristics of dielectric loss, depend on the structure. Normal aging of the insulation may be manifested by the gradual reduction in its withstand capability over a long period of time. In addition, discharges would like to take place on the surface of the solid insulation or within enclosed voids. The gas ions driven by the electric field would hit on the wall of the insulation and react chemically with some of its surface layer molecules. Thus chemical and thermal degradation of the insulating material occurs at these microscopic sites. When a persistent discharge continues, it is called an arc discharge. This can result in the failure of the dielectric and a sudden breakdown under operating voltage. To simulate the incipient internal winding faults completely, both the aging phase and the arcing phase have to be taken into account. Therefore, a combination of an insulation aging model and an arcing model was developed to model an incipient internal winding fault
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A. Aging Model:In considering the electrical behaviour of dielectric material, it has been traditional to approach the subject in terms of an equivalent parallel circuit as shown in Fig. 2.V is the applied voltage and I is the current through the insulation. is the capacitive component of current and the resistive component of the current is . The resistance represents the lossy part of the dielectric, taking account of the losses that may result from electronic and ionic conductivity, dipole orientation and space charge polarization. is the capacitance of the dielectric, where is the equivalent capacitance in the vacuum of the insulation and is the relative permittivity or dielectric constant

In Fig. 2(b), is defined as the loss angle, which represents the dielectric energy losses in the insulation. is commonly known as loss tangent or dissipation factor. Is the power factor of the dielectric. For a perfect dielectric, the loss is very small (0); the current leads the applied voltage by 90 degrees. During aging of the dielectric, the loss increases; therefore the angle between the current vector and the applied voltage is less than 90 degrees. The dissipation factor may also be expressed as

Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit of a dielectric material. (a) Parallel equivalent circuit. (b) Corresponding phasor diagram.
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B) Arcing Model:An arc is defined as a continuous luminous discharge of electricity across an insulating medium, usually accompanied by the partial volatilization of the electrodes. Arcs may develop from a spark when arc tracking occurs across a partially conductive surface, such as damaged insulation. Once extinguished, an arc requires a potential, known as the restrike voltage, to reignite the arc. After an AC current becomes zero, the restrike voltage establishes the potential needed to restrike the arc with the opposite polarity. From experimental results and analysis, the arc voltage is usually flaptopped and that the magnitude of arcing fault currents ranged from 57% to 100% of the available short-circuit current .

Fig. 3. Arcing voltage and current.

(a)

(b)

Fig. 4. Equivalent circuits of the arc (a) during the burning period (b) during the extinction period.

The arcing characteristics are illustrated in Fig. 3. The figure shows the simple case of arcing current and arcing voltage in a resistive load circuit. The dotted line is the arcing current; the solid line is the arcing voltage; the dash-dot line is the system voltage. The arc ignites only after sufficient voltage is across the gap. It extinguishes when voltage drops below that needed to sustain the arc. Arcing voltage is almost a square wave, except for the transient near current zero. In the figure, the magnitude of the square wave is the voltage needed to sustain the arc. The choppiness of the voltage trace indicates another distinct characteristic of the arc, that of a highfrequency voltage source. In addition, arcing is random. Once it starts, it may be interspersed with segments of normal current. The rms value of arc current and energy is less than that of a bolted fault. For arcs of very small length, such as the arcing between two turns of a transformer winding, a fixed back voltage opposing the source is commonly used to represent the arc as shown in Fig. 4. The equivalent circuit comprises a resistance and an inductance that are functions of the arc length l, its current i, and the currents rate of change with time i. The above parameters can be experimentally obtained. Fig. 4(a) would apply for both dc and ac circuits during periods when the arc is burning. In Fig. 4(b), represents the stray capacitance. Since the insulation between the two layers or the two turns in the windings is very thin, the resistance, inductance and the stray capacitance in the equivalent circuit are small enough to be ignored. Thus, the arcing model can be represented by the equivalent
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circuit shown in Fig. 5. The voltage source E is a random square wave representing the equivalent arcing voltage. S1 and S2 are timecontrolled switches. If there is no arcing in the circuit, S1 is closed and S2 is open, and the value of E is zero. When E equals to , the model represents arcing. When S1 is closed and S2 is open, the arcing model is in the burning period. Otherwise, when S1 is open and S2 is closed, the arcing model is in the extinction period.

Fig. 5. Arcing model for incipient internal winding faults.

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C) Combination Model:-

This figure represents the parallel combination model. The parallel model represents a perfect insulation when S1 and S2 are open; the value of E is zero and is a very large resistance so that the current in the insulation is almost zero. To represent deteriorating insulation, is decreased to a small value. When the random square wave E is zero, S1 and S2 are open. When the value E of is, the model represents the degrading insulation with arcing. In this case, when S1 is closed and S2 is open, the model simulates the burning period. If S1 is open and S2 is closed, it models the extinction period. The aging model and the arcing model can also be connected in series into a series combination insulation model. In the simulation using the series combination insulation model was discussed in more detail. Since the comparison between the simulation and the field test results showed the terminal characteristics obtained from the parallel combination model were more similar to those from the field tests, this topic focuses on discussing the implementation of the parallel combination model and the corresponding simulation results.

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IV. IMPLEMENTATION AND SIMULATION RESULTS A. Transformer Parameters:Simulations were carried out based on a custom-built 25 kVA, 60 Hz, single-phase, shell-form transformer used for field experiments. The design data were as follows. The rated voltage ratio was 7200 V/240 V/120 V. The normal impedance was 1.75%, and normal reactance was 1.62%. The turns ratio was 780/26. The primary winding was made of copper; the secondary sub windings were made of Aluminium. The insulation between the layers in the custom-built transformer was made of Aramid paper. The custom-built transformer was equipped with various taps placed on both windings so that internal faults could be performed by connecting two taps or connecting a tap to ground.

B. Incipient Faults With Aging Model Only:The parameters of the equivalent circuit for the perfect insulation between two adjacent turns of the transformer were calculated. According to the literatures and previous experimental results, the equivalent capacitance, , changes little. Therefore, we fix the equivalent capacitance. For the perfect insulation of Aramid paper, the dissipation factor, , was 0.006. Thus the calculated result for the equivalent resistance was 49.0 M . With the deterioration of the insulation, the dissipation factor increased. When the dissipation factor increased to 3* , the insulation was broken down completely. After the aging model was obtained, it was combined with the FEA internal short circuit fault model to investigate the terminal behaviours of the transformer when the insulation is degrading. When the incipient fault occurred between the 15th and the 55th turns on the primary winding, the relationships between the RMS values of primary current and secondary current in one power cycle and the resistance are illustrated in Fig. 6 and 7.
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From the plots, some conclusions were obtained. First, when was larger than 10 , the primary current was very close to the transformer rated values. In other words, the transformer was in good condition .When was less than 0.01 , the primary current was approximately equal to the internal short circuit current. Namely, an internal shortcircuit fault occurred in the transformer. When the value of was in the range of [0.01, 10], the primary current changed between the rated current and the short circuit current value. That shows an incipient fault occurred in the transformer. Second, the secondary voltage and current were almost at the rated values when an incipient internal winding fault existed in the transformer.

(a)

Fig.6.Terminal currents with the aging model to simulate primary incipient fault. (a) Relationship between primary current and R .

Fig.7. Relationship between secondary current and R .

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C. Incipient Fault With Aging and Arcing Models:After the aging model and arcing model were implemented, they were combined into a combination model for the insulation and paralleled with the internal short circuit fault model in the Maxwell Spice. The aging model and the arcing model connected in parallel were used to investigate terminal voltages and currents, and the circulating current flowing through the insulation model when the insulation was degrading and the arcing phenomena appeared. To investigate more characteristics of the arcing from transformer incipient faults, the waveforms of the primary current were investigated in the frequency domain. Since the frequency domain of the secondary current was dominated by 60 Hz component, only the frequency characteristics of primary current are discussed in this section. In addition, because the fundamental component, 60 Hz, is so large that other frequency components are hardly seen, the primary current was filtered by a simulated digital 60 Hz notch filter before the FFT analysis was performed. In the simulation, the sampling rate was 3840 Hz. A 64-point FFT was performed over one power cycle. Below figure shows the frequency spectrum of the primary current at time of 0.025 s. In this case, the insulation resistance in the insulation model was 0.1 . The current harmonic components were concentrated in the lower frequencies below 960 Hz.

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Frequency analysis of primary current for the transformer with an incipient internal fault between the 15th and 55th turns on the Primary winding (R = 0.1 , t = 0:025 s)

Frequency analysis of primary current for the transformer with an incipient internal fault between the 10th and 13th turns on the Primary winding (R = 0.1 , t = 0:025 s)

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V. CONCLUSION:This paper presented a new transformer model to simulate an internal incipient winding fault. The new transformer model was implemented by combining deteriorating insulation model with a finite element analysis internal short circuit fault model. The new deteriorating insulation model, which includes an aging model and an arcing model, was developed based on the physical behaviour of aging insulation and the arcing phenomena occurring when the insulation was severely damaged. The aging model and the arcing model of the insulation were connected in parallel to produce a parallel combination insulation model. The parallel combination insulation model was combined with the internal short circuit model to predict the terminal voltages and currents of the transformer under various incipient fault conditions. The characteristics of the terminal currents and circulating current in the faulted winding were analyzed in time domain and frequency domain. Some incipient-like fault cases obtained from internal short circuit field tests were also analyzed in time domain and frequency domain. The comparisons between the incipient-like fault experimental test cases and simulation results showed that terminal behaviours of the faulted transformer obtained from the field tests show some similar characteristics to those from simulations using the parallel combination model. In future work, the incipient fault transformer model will be used to generate a database of incipient internal winding faults in distribution transformers for the development of intelligent transformer fault detection techniques.

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REFERENCES:[1] C. E. Lin, J. M. Ling, and C. L. Huang, Expert system for transformer fault diagnosis using dissolved gas analysis, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 8. [2] W. Yue, H. Zhuxiao, and Z. Jiaxiang, Expediting cellulose insulation aging evaluation and life prediction thorough degree of polymerization measurements, in Proc. 3rd Int. Conf. Properties Appl. Dielectric Materials, 1988. [3] A. Noro, K. Nakamura, T. Watanabe, and T. Morita, Acousticbased real-time partial discharge location in model transformer, in Proc. ICSPAT. [4] J. Bak-Jensen, B. Bak-Jensen, and S. D. Mikkelsen, Detection of faults and aging phenomena in transformers by transfer functions, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 10. [5] P. Bastard, P. Bertrand, and M. Meunier, A transformer model for winding fault studies, IEEE Trans. Power Del., vol. 9. [6] A. Guzman, D. Hou, and S. E. Zocholl, Transformer modeling as applied to differential protection, in Proc. Can. Conf. Elect. Comput. Eng., vol. 1, 1996. [7] H.Wang and K. L. Butler, Modeling transformer with internal winding faults by calculating leakage factors, in Proc. 31st North Amer. Power Symp., San Luis Obispo, CA, Oct. 1999. [8] H. Wang, P. Palmer-Buckle, and K. L. Butler, Transformer models for detection of incipient internal winding faults, in Proc. 30th North Amer. Power Symp., Cleveland, OH, Oct. 1998.

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