Experimental and predicted XLPE cable insulation properties under UV radiation

Abstract

This paper deals with the behavior of the crosslinked polyethylene (XLPE) used as high-voltage power cableinsulation under ultraviolet (UV) radiations. For this, XLPE samples have been irradiated for 240 h using low-pressurevapor fluorescent lamps. Electrical (surface and volume resistivities), mechanical (tensile strength, elongation at breakand surface hardness) and physical (weight loss, water absorption, work of water adhesion and contact angle) tests havebeen first carried out. Experimental results show that the XLPE characteristics are affected by UV radiation. Indeed,a decline in surface resistivity, mechanical properties, and contact angle, and an increase in the water retention amountand weight loss have been recorded. In order to predict and extrapolate some XLPE properties, a supervised artificialneural network (ANN) trained by Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm has been designed. The collected database is usedto train and test the ANN performance. The obtained results show that the proposed ANN algorithm presents goodestimation and prediction since the predicted output values agree with the experimental data.