Modelling the effect of nanofiller’s shape and alignment on the dielectric strength and permittivity of polyethylene nanocomposite insulation

Abstract Solid insulation defects are a major cause of power failures. Incorporation of micro and nanoparticles in the solid insulation materials has proven its advantage. It has been reported that nanocomposites are far superior in terms of insulation to microcomposites because of larger interphase area between nanofillers and polymer in nanocomposites. In addition to that nature, size, shape, concentration and alignment of nanofillers affect the properties of resulting nanocomposite insulation. A lot of work has reported the effect of nanofiller’s nature, size and concentration but very little is reported on the effect of filler’s shape and alignment on the insulation and dielectric properties. In this paper nanocomposite dielectrics with nanofillers of various shapes and alignment are modelled by varying their permittivity using finite element method. To characterize the effect of various shapes and orientation electric field intensity and energy density models are computed. Simulations are performed using AC/DC module of COMSOL Multiphysics. The results revealed that shape and alignment of nanofillers are the two key factors in tuning the breakdown strength and permittivity of nanocomposite dielectrics for their applications in insulation as well as high voltage capacitors.