ABSTRACT

Husain T.  A Study on the Surface Characteristics of Polymeric Isolator Materials using the Hydrophobic Measurement Method (supervised by Salama Manjang and Zahir Zainuddin).

This research project investigates the surface characteristics of polymeric isolator materials to determine whether they are characterized as hydrophobic or hydrophilic. The measurement is conducted using the water-drop method to derive the contact angle equation. A package of Borland-Delphi programming tool is developed to support the analysis.

The results of the measurement have shown that polymeric material with no pollutant has the contact angle of greater than 90o (95.78o in average) while the same material with pollutant has the contact angle of less than 90o (73.53o in average). This is confirming that the pollutant has decreased the isolation characteristics of the polymeric isolator materials. When the contact angle continuously drops to near zero, the surface leakage current problem and flashover are inevitable.   

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