Effects of high thermal conductivity LDPE/BN composites on temperature field distribution and ampacity of power cable

Insulating material used in cables is usually polymer with excellent electrical properties but terrible thermal conductivity. The temperature field distribution of cables is affected by the heat dissipation of cable system and insulation-related thermal problems set a limit to the ampacity of cables. Improving the thermal conductivity of insulation may be beneficial to improve the temperature field distribution of cable and enhance its ampacity. In this paper, a numerical simulation model is employed and the temperature field distribution in the cable is calculated and simulated by finite element method (FEM), and the cable ampacity is calculated by a modified iteration method to research the relationship between the thermal conductivity of insulation and the cable ampacity. The results show that, with increasing the thermal conductivity, the cable core temperature is reduced obviously with the given load current, and the temperature field distribution in cable becomes more uniform, which imply that the improved thermal conductivity of insulation contributes to the improvement of cable ampacity.