Electric field simulations of field grading techniques in HVDC cable joints

Purpose In high voltage direct current cable systems, cable joints are known as the least reliable components due to the use of multiple dielectrics. Resulting from the electric field and temperature depending conductivity of the different dielectrics, field enhancement at critical areas, e.g. triple points, may result in accelerated aging and the failure of the component. To reduce the stress, different field grading techniques are applied. The purpose of this study is to investigate different grading techniques for cable joints. Different shapes of the electrode and a varying nonlinear conductivity of field grading materials (FGM) are used for the simulation of the electric field. Design/methodology/approach Coupled electro-thermal field simulations are applied for different joint geometries, to obtain the stationary electric field. Electric field simulations in cable joint using geometric and nonlinear field grading techniques are shown. Findings Using the geometric field grading, the shape of the stress cone determines the field values in critical areas (triple points). High stress reduction is obtained for a certain curvature of the stress cone. For the nonlinear stress control, materials with a higher conductivity in comparison to the cable and the joint material are used. A field reduction is obtained by increasing the total conductivity. On the other hand, this is also increasing the insulation losses within the total FGM. More applicable is the decrease of the switching field or the increase of nonlinearity, which is only locally increase the conductivity and the insulation losses. Furthermore, simulations results show that an approximately constant field reduction is obtained, if the nonlinearity is above a certain threshold. Research limitations/implications This study is restricted to a field dependency of FGM only. For impulse voltages, high temperature and electric conductivity values my result in a thermal runaway. Furthermore, only direct current field grading techniques are studied. Originality/value The field grading of cable joints, using geometric and nonlinear techniques, is analyzed. A comparison between the electric field, by varying the curvature of the ground stress cone or the FGM conductivity constants in a complex joint geometry is novel. With its effect on the electric fields, general requirements for the geometry (geometric field grading) or the values of the FGM constants (nonlinear field grading) are defined to obtain a sufficient field grading.