Resistance of high-content polypropylene/wood composites to low-current arc discharges

Polymer composites are used to reduce the cost of production materials and to improve their parameters. Plastics have started to dominate the industry as insulating materials, however, in order to be used as insulators, plastics must meet the required standards. Those standards include a minimum resistance to high-voltage, low-current arc discharges. The difficulty in specifying such resistance is that the characteristic of resistance can change in time. In this paper, we tested the resistance to high-voltage, low-current arc discharges for different aging periods. To speed up the aging process, we used a climatic chamber. We measured the depth and area of damage and absorption of H2O in relation to the aging time in the climatic chamber. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.