Pulse Breakdown Strengths of Liquid, Gel and Solid Insulating Materials Using Closely Spaced Spherical Electrodes

In this paper an evaluation of a number of different insulating materials, under pulse breakdown conditions, is described. The experimental setup used an 8 stage Marx generator in order to generate a high potential difference (in the range 80-220 kV) between two spherical electrodes which were spaced 1.5-3.5 mm apart. The breakdown voltage of each of the materials was recorded and the data was then post-processed in order to determine the breakdown strength of each of the samples.