The cables are more likely to deteriorate after several years of service in Shanghai,a city with a humid climate and abundant rainfall.Before assessing the aging status of those cables,it is critical to present effective test parameters which are sensitive to the aging process under special field conditions.Therefore,we have performed water tree investigation,tensile test,and differential scanning calorimetry(DSC)test on hundreds of cable samples removed from service.A large number of typical bowtie water trees were found in cable insulation and the water tree content was proposed to characterize the degree of water treeing.Based on Arrhenius Equation and equivalent thermal history parameters estimated from DSC profiles,we also proposed a new parameter ln(t/τθ)to characterize the aging status of cable insulation,Where,t is treated duration andτθis the thermal life under treated temperature.The applicabilities of water tree content,tensile strength,and ln(t/τθ)are tested using the analysis of variance(ANOVA).Then we investigated the relationship between the tensile strength and the water tree content using regression analysis,and analyzed the relationship between ln(t/τθ)and the tensile strength.The results indicated that each of these parameters performs differently with cables which experienced different degrees of age related degradation,and can be used to identify the aging status of field aged cables.The tensile strength can reflect the water treeing condition of field aged cables very well as a commonly used functional parameter.Since ln(t/τθ)is strongly related to the tensile strength,it is an effective parameter to characterize the aging status of field aged cable insulation.Using this newly proposed parameter is more time saving because of the convenience in sampling.
