Effects of electrical-hydrothermal aging degradation on dielectric and trap properties of high temperature vulcanized silicone rubber materials

In this paper, a new aging platform combined the high voltage electric field and the hydrothermal environment was built. To investigate the aging mechanism, physicochemical, dielectric and trap properties of HTV SR before and after electrical-hydrothermal aging for 24 days were discussed. The results indicated that, compared with hydrothermal aging, more cracks and holes appeared on the surface of HTV SR after electrical-hydrothermal aging, and the content of flame retardant decreased significantly. Due to the main chain and side chain scission of PDMS, lots of low weight molecular (LWM) substances and free radicals were produced. And the tensile strength and elongation at break significantly decreased. Various physical and chemical defects appeared in the HTV SR specimen in the process of electrical-hydrothermal degradation, as a result of which, the dielectric constant significantly increased and the peak trap density increased by about 2.5 times compared to the virgin sample. The increase in trap density in turn accelerated the charge accumulation and enhanced the breakdown probability, resulting in the electric field strength decrease from 21.8 kV mm(−1) to 16.1 kV mm(−1) and severe degradation of HTV SR.