STUDIES ON E-FIELD DISTRIBUTION FOR COMPLEX ELECTRODE-SPACER

ARRANGEMENTS USED IN HV SYSTEMS

A. Lahiri

S. Chakravorti

Electrical Engineering Department

Jadavpur University
Kolkata, India.

Abstract
The electric field distributions on or near the electrodes or spacer boundaries are extremely
significant from the practical point of view and hence it necessitates the simulation of the
boundaries with high degree of accuracy. This paper highlights an efficient method of simulating a
complex electrode-spacer configuration used in gas-insulated systems (GIS) and focuses the
accuracy of the simulation.

1.

INTRODUCTION

The accuracy of asymmetric E-field computation by

numerical methods such as Charge Simulation Method
[1-2], Boundary Element Method [3], depends mostly
on the degree of accuracy of the simulation of the
electrode-spacer geometry. The electrode-spacer
configurations are so designed in HV equipments that
they ensure minimum stress mainly on the live
electrode and on the spacer surface. Furthermore,
these designs are constrained with mechanical
considerations in gas-insulated systems. Hence the
practical electrode-spacer arrangements can assume
such complex configurations that more emphasis is
required for their accurate simulation.

2.

points in space to the new positions by adding offsets

to their co-ordinates.
x
t x Shift x
y = y + Shift
y
t
z z Shift z

t
where (x, y, z) are the co-ordinates of the point with
respect to the co-ordinate axes and ( x t , y t , z t ) are
the new co-ordinates of the points after adding the
offsets Shiftx, Shifty and Shiftz to the coordinates of the point.

MODELING

For the modeling of the electrode-spacer

configuration, as shown in Fig. 1, the basic elements
that are used are cylindrical surface element, spherical
surface element, toroidal surface element, circular disc
surface element and circular surface elements
truncated at one edge. The parametric view of the
circular surface element truncated at one edge is as
shown in Fig. 2. Defining such a shape and then
generating mesh over it is a tedious job unless a CAD
software is coupled to a field analysis tool. This paper
presents an efficient method for defining such a
complex geometry. The computational procedure of
defining such a shape is presented in Appendix-I.
The required translation given to each individual
geometry for the development of the complete
electrode-spacer model are obtained by translating

All possible rotations in 3-dimensions are obtained by

composition of three canonical rotations each about
the x-axis, y-axis and z-axis respectively. But in the
present case, instead of defining a rotation by three
canonical rotations the rotations are defined by an axis

of rotation and an angle of rotation in the following

manner.

For a rotation about y-axis by an angle

0 0 0
0 0 1

A = 0 1 0 ; B = 0 0 0
0 0 0
1 0 0
For a rotation about z-axis by an angle
1 0
0 0 0
0

A = 0 0 0 ; B = 1 0 0
0 0 1
0
0 0
Finally the co-ordinate of a point after being given the
required translation and rotation is obtained as
x

x t x r
y = y + y
t r
z
z
z t r

3. ELECTRODE-SPACER
CONFIGURATION

x r
x

y
y
=
(
A
*
(
1

cos

)
+
B
*
sin

+
I
*
cos

)
*
r

z r
z
where,

xr, yr and zr are the co-ordinates of the point after

rotation and x, y and z are its co-ordinates prior to
rotation.
p x
p x


A = Symmetric p y ; B = Skew p y and I is an


p z
p z
identity matrix of order 3 3 . The normalized vector
r
p specifies the axis of rotation and the angle gives
the degree of rotation about this axis. A is the
r
symmetric matrix of a vector p which will generate a
vector in the direction of the axis. B is the skew
r
symmetric matrix of the vector p which will generate
a vector that is perpendicular to both the axis and its
input vector and the identity matrix I will generate a
vector in the same direction as the input vector.
For a rotation by an angle about the x-axis
1 0 0
A = 0 0 0 ; B =
0 0 0

0 0 0
0 0 1

0 1 0

The spacer, as shown in Fig. 1, is stressed between

two co-axial electrodes of which the inner one is live
and maintained at a potential of 1 volt (normalized
voltage, for ready reference) in the present case and
the outer one is grounded. For the solid dielectric,
which is epoxy in this case, the relative permittivity
has been considered to be 5.3. Large amount of gas is
required for the purpose of insulation in gas-insulated
systems. Pure Sulphur Hexafluoride (SF6) is very
expensive to meet this bulk demand and hence various
researches have been carried out for replacing SF6 as
an insulating gas. A summery of these researches has
been presented by Christophorou [4]. It has been seen
that some of the gas mixtures, like CF4-F8, have higher
insulation capabilities than SF6 but they are very toxic
and also degenerate under partial discharge occurring
due to high electric field intensity. Moreover, the nonavailability of such gas mixtures to meet the bulk
amount of industrial requirement made Nitrogen (N2),
which is a natural gas, as the most popular insulating
gas for use in GIS. The non-toxicity of Nitrogen is
also an added advantage for using it. However to
increase the insulation capability, another insulating
gas has to be used with N2. An insulation capability of
70 % - 80 % of pure SF6 can be achieved at the same
pressure when a mixture of N2 with an SF6 content of
less than 20 % is used for the purpose. Also N2/SF6
gas mixture reduces the cost of operation considerably
without reducing the reliability of the system. With
this resume, the gaseous dielectric considered in the
present work is N2/SF6 mixture whose relative
permittivity is considered to be 1.005. For the purpose
of
computation
the
entire
electrode-spacer
configuration has been discretized into 1305 nodes
and the elements over the boundaries are taken as

curvilinear triangular elements and 13 point Gaussian

integration [5] has been carried out. Once the
electrodes and the spacer surfaces are discretized into
boundary elements a suitable distribution function is
introduced for the equivalent surface charges along the
discrete surface elements, so that the following
boundary conditions are satisfied:
(i)
On the conductor surfaces with known
potential, the prescribed values of the potential
function are maintained.
(ii)
On the dielectric-dielectric interface, the
boundary condition for the normal component of
electric flux density is maintained.
Fig. 3 shows the procedural events in the E-Field
calculation software code that has been developed.

Fig. 5 shows the resultant stress on the live electrode,

which is in good agreement with the shape of the live
electrode.

4.2

RESULTS
SURFACE

FOR

INSULATOR

The potential plot along the insulator surface is shown

in Fig. 6. As is seen from Fig. 6, the potential
decreases uniformly from 1 V to 0 V when moved
from live electrode to ground electrode along the
insulator surface. This is what is expected for the
potential distribution along surface of the insulator.

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 RESULTS FOR LIVE ELECTRODE
Fig. 4 shows the potential plot on the live electrode.
This is a plot of the potentials calculated at the
centroids of the curvilinear triangles considered over
the boundary of the live electrode. As is seen from
Fig. 4 the potential varies from 1.0003 V to 0.99915 V
at these points, which is in good agreement with the
boundary condition to be satisfied for the conductor
surfaces because the potential at the nodes on the live
electrode is maintained at 1 V as mentioned earlier.

Fig. 7 shows the resultant stress on the insulator

surface.

5.
G. R. Cowper, Gaussian Quadrature
Formulas for Triangles, IJNME, Vol. 7, 1973, pp.
405-408.

7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

4.3 SIMULATION ACCURACY

Fig. 8 shows the percentage error on the spacer surface
for normal flux densities calculated from both sides of
the spacer surface. From Fig. 8 it may be seen that this
error is within 0.4-0.5 % which confirms the utility of
the software code developed.

5. CONCLUSIONS
An integrated software has been developed which is
capable of simulating conventional as well as nonconventional geometries as cited in this paper and then
calculates E-Field by using indirect BEM.

6. REFERENCES
1.
H. Singer, H. Steinbigler and P. Weiss, A
Charge Simulation Method for the Calculation of High
Voltage Fields, IEEE Transactions on PAS, Vol. 93,
1974, pp 1660-1668.
2.
A. Blaszczyk, Computation of Quasi-static
Electric Fields with Region Oriented Charge
Simulation, IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, Vol.
32, 1996, pp 821-831.
3.
F. Gutfleisch, H. Singer, K. Foerger and J. A.
Gomollon, Calculation of HV Fields by means of
BEM, IEEE Transactions on PWRD, Vol. 9, 1994,
pp 743-749.
4.
L. G. Christophorou and R. J. Burnt, SF6/N2
Mixtures, Basic and HV Insulation Properties, IEEE
Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation,
Vol. 2, No. 5, October 1995, pp 925-1002.

A. Lahiri expresses his thanks to CSIR (India) for

granting him Senior Research Fellowship to carry out
this work.
Dr. S. Chakravorti wishes to express his sincere
thanks to AICTE for providing financial support to
this
work
through
the
project
grant
8019/RDII/R&D/ELE(181)/2000-01.

8. APPENDIX-I
8.1 Significance of the Notations used in
Fig. 9:
n: Number of divisions of the circumference of the
circle of radius rmin.
n1: Number of truncations of the edge of the disc.
n2: Number of divisions of the width w.
n3: Number of divisions of each of the space of width
w1.
h: value of each smallest division in which the width
w is divided.
h1: value of each smallest division in which the
circumference of the circle of radius rmin is divided.
phimin: angle made by rmin with X-axis before it
rotates about an axis passing through the center of the
disc and perpendicular to the plane of the disc.
phimax: maximum angle through which rmin rotates
about an axis passing through the center of the disc
and perpendicular to the plane of the disc.
phi1: angle through which r[i] of each section of
width w1 rotates from the axis of that section
within the span.
theta[i]: angle made by the axis of each section with
X-axis with theta[4] = 3600 + theta[1].
angle1: value of each smallest division into which the
span of each r[i] is divided.
xrot, yrot, zrot are the rotations given to the coordinate axes.
xtrans, ytrans, ztrans are the translations of the coordinate axes.
axis: axis of each truncation i.e. OA, OB & OC
referred to Fig. 2.
The terms within the quotes, except the term axis are
as referred to Fig. 2

8.2 Simulation technique of the special

element

Address for communication

A.

Lahiri

Senior Research Fellow

Council of Scientific & Industrial Research
Electrical Engineering Department
Jadavpur University
Kolkata 700 032
India.
Email: jit_lahiri@yahoo.com