Multi-Parameter Analysis of Silicone Elastomer Degradation used in Polymeric Insulator

SILICONE elastomers are widely used as the protective outer layer of outdoor high voltage transmission insulators. They specially have certain number of advantages such as lightweights, good handling, lower cost, resistant to vandalism, better performance and excellent hydrophobicity in pollutedenvironment [1-2]. But during infield application the problem arises when silicone elastomer used in insulators, deteriorate and lose its performance subjecting to ultra violet radiation,electrical stress, ozone, heat, industrial pollution and etc. Being able to assess and predict the status of silicone rubberweather shed is essential to determine when and how the device will fail. Nowadays Life time prediction of rubber materials especially silicone insulators is a new topic [3]. Fuzzy pattern recognition model is one of the powerful tools that have been used in modelling and controlling uncertainmulti-criteria decision making tasks [4-6]. It is based on the idea to find out a set of relations between inputs and outputsdescribing a process. In this paper, we investigate a new method to assess silicone elastomer sheds in the polymeric insulators. The changes in the thermal, mechanical, chemical and electrical parameters during the silicone degradation, will be concerned by the model