Design of ZnO Microvaristor End Corona
Protection for Electrical Machines
Daniel Weida
and Sebastian Böhmelt
Faculty of Electrical Engineering
Helmut-Schmidt-University
D-22008 Hamburg, Germany
Email: daniel.weida@hsu-hh.de
Abstract—For the stator winding of electrical machines, end
corona protection arrangements including semi-conductive mi-
crovaristor lacquers are analyzed using finite element method
(FEM) simulations. Those materials feature nonlinear resistive
properties depending on the local electric field. Hence, electro-
quasistatic FEM simulations considering capacitive and non-
linear resistive material behavior are performed. End corona
protection arrangements using semi-conductive materials are
compared. The resulting voltage distributions, tangential electric
fields and ohmic losses are presented.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Smart materials allow for electrical machines to be more
reliable and environmentally friendly due to more efficient
designs [1]. The introduction of stress grading paints or tapes
is a topic of still intense ongoing research effort.
As those materials feature field-dependent resistive behav-
ior, the electric field stress is reduced due to more homoge-
neous electric field distributions and hence corona effects and
partial discharges (PD) are suppressed. End corona protection
setups with embedded foils are presented in [2]. Stress grad-
ing of rotating high voltage machines using semi-conductive
silicium carbide (SiC) tapes or lacquers are discussed and
analyzed in [3], [4], [5] and [6]. Related measurements can
be found in [7], [8], [9] and [10], computer simulations using
first order elements and ansatz functions in [11]. A discussion
of stress grading based on zinc oxide (ZnO) microvaristor
compound material can be found in [9], [12], [13] and [14].
In this paper, end corona protection setups using three dif-
ferent types of semi-conductive lacquers are simulated. Those
simulations aim for comparison of electric properties between
different designs. Reference [9] claims that nonlinear behavior
is not required for stress grading from a theoretical point of
view, the grading effects of an artificial lacquer with a constant
average resistivity are compared to those of realistic SiC and
ZnO lacquers. The thickness of the lacquer layers is only
tenths of a mm. Since coils with rounded rectangular cross-
sections are analyzed, 3-D FEM simulations on curvilinear
unstructured tetrahedral meshes are applicable. They are done
with first and second order element and ansatz functions,
respectively. As the lacquers feature constant capacitive and
nonlinear resistive material behavior, the simulations have to
be executed in time domain.
978-1-4244-6301-5/10/$26.00 @2010 IEEE
Markus Clemens
Chair of Electromagnetic Theory
Bergische Universität Wuppertal
D-42119 Wuppertal, Germany
In addition to the positive effect of grading the electric
stresses, the conductivity of the applied material results in
ohmic losses which produce heat. Hence, the total ohmic
losses and their distributions are analyzed for lacquers which
feature constant or field-dependent resistive behavior (SiC and
ZnO).
This paper is structured as follows: After the mathematical
description of the nonlinear field grading material and the elec-
tric field in section II, the model of an end corona protection
benchmark is developed in section III. The numerical results
of the simulations are shown and discussed in section IV and
a conclusion is given in section V.
II. M ATHEMATICAL D ESCRIPTION
A. Nonlinear Field Grading Material
The functional part of the analyzed end corona protections
are semi-conductive materials which feature field-dependent
conductivities. In order to consider this nonlinear material
behavior in the simulation, the DC surface conductivities of
the used lacquers are measured for various voltages. The setup
can be found in Fig. 1 and the results in Table I. As an
exponential fit for the resistivity of the SiC as proposed in
[11] does not take saturation effects into account, a polynomial
spline representation based on the measurement points is
used. The ZnO material lacquer features a strong nonlinear
field-dependent behavior. Thus, a spline representation does
not exhibit monotonic increase. Since this, however, is a
necessary requirement for the Quasi-Newton Raphson method
used within the transient field simulation to converge, an
analytic functions is used for the representation of the field-
dependent resistive behavior of the ZnO material lacquer. The
measured data and the different interpolation representations
can be found in Fig. 2.
TABLE I
M EASURED MATERIAL BEHAVIOR .
U in kV 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0 5.0 6.0 7.0 8.0 9.0
ISiC in µA 0.077 0.671 2.87 13.0 41.0 146 430 800 1200
IZnO in µA 0.003 0.005 0.009 0.023 0.081 0.56 17.0 230 900
 III. C ORONA P ROTECTION M ODELING
A. End Corona Protection
The analyzed end corona protection setup is drawn in Fig.
3 and 4. Further information on end corona protection can be
found in the literature, e.g. [4], [5], [6], [10].
Fig. 1. Setup for resistive material behavior measurements. An epoxy board
(blue) with the lateral dimensions 13 cm x 5 cm is coated with the semi- End Corona Protection
conductive lacquer (green). The current between the copper electrodes (gray), Outer Corona Protection
Groundwall Insulation
which are connected to a high voltage source, is measured in order to obtain
the surface conductance.
Coil

−6 d2 d1
10
recorded data SiC
recorded data ZnO
const mean SiC l1 l2 HV Connector
spline fit SiC
Ground Connector
−8
10 analytic fit ZnO
Surface Conductance in A/V →

Fig. 3. Half section drawing of the axis-symmetric end corona protection

setup. The dimensions are: l1 = 220.0 mm, l2 = 220.0 mm, d1 = 30.0 mm,
d2 = 34.2 mm.

−10
10 End Corona Protection
Coil
b
Groundwall Insulation

−12
10 HV Connector

Fig. 4. Cross section drawing of the axis-symmetric end corona protection

0 2 4 6 8 10
Electric Field Norm in kV/cm →
Fig. 2. Field-dependent resistive material behavior of lacquers with SiC and
ZnO material. The measured data of Table I is interpolated using adequate
constant, spline or analytic functions.
setup. The dimensions are: b = 10.0 mm, edge radius = 1.0 mm.
Since the geometry is axis-symmetric, only an eighth is
discretized with curvilinear tetrahedral elements, Fig. 5. It
consists of 29 398 tetrahedrons which result in 3 391 degrees
of freedom (DoFs) for first element and polynomial order and
32 961 DoFs for second element and polynomial order.

B. Electro-Quasistatic Field Including Nonlinear Material

The electric field is assumed to be electro-quasistatic in the

grading material and in the whole computational domain. This
is based on the presumption that the electric energy density ωe
is much higher than the magnetic energy density ωm . Hence,
the time variation of the magnetic induction in Faradays law
can be neglected. The resulting partial differential equation
(PDE) for the electric scalar potential ϕ reads
div ∂t (ε grad ϕ) + div (κ(grad ϕ) grad ϕ) = 0 ,
which considers capacitive ε and field-dependent resistive
effects κ = κ(grad ϕ). This PDE is spatially discretized with
the help of a modified FEM C++ library (FEMSTER) on
curvilinear tetrahedral elements [15], [16] and in time using
SDIRK32 implicit Runge-Kutta method [17].
Fig. 5. Tetrahedral mesh of the 3-D geometry of the simulated corona
protection. The microvaristor lacquer is highlighted in green.
(1)
The groundwall insulation is assumed to have zero con-
ductivity and relative permittivity of 5.0. The grounded outer
corona protection and the coil are assumed to be perfect
electric conductors (PEC). The coil is energized with a ramped
sinusoidal voltage of 33.0 kV eff at 50 Hz. In the third period
of the transient simulation with period length T , the root mean
 square (RMS) values are evaluated for the scalar potential ϕ, 16
the tangential electric field Etan and for the ohmic losses E · J SiC linear simulation
according to: 14 SiC nonlinear simulation
 ZnO nonlinear simulation
  i(t=3T )

Tangential electric field in kV/cm →

 3T 
1 1  12
ϕRMS = ϕ(t)2 d t ≈  ϕ(ti )2 · Δti ,
T 2T T
i(t=2T )
10
 
 3T 
 i(t=3T )
 8
1 1
Etan,RMS = Etan (t)2 d t ≈  Etan (ti )2 · Δti ,
T 2T T
i(t=2T )
6
 i(t=3T )
1 3T 2 1  4
E ·J = κ(|E(t)|)E(t) d t ≈ κ(|E(ti )|)E(ti )2· Δti .
T 2T T
i(t=2T )
2
In this way, all higher harmonics are considered which are
caused by the nonlinearity.
0
0 5 10 15
IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
Length in cm →
A. Voltage Distribution Along the Surface
Fig. 7. Electric field along the surface. A constant resistive material as
proposed in [9] does not show comparable field grading effects.
40

B. Electric Field Along the Surface

35
In order to analyze the grading effects of the lacquers,
the tangential electric field along the surface of the ECP is
30 compared. In comparison to the nonlinear simulations, the
linear material in Fig. 7 shows the required grading effect
Scalar potential in kV →

25 in a less pronounced manner.

C. Ohmic Losses Along the Surface

20
The distributions of the ohmic losses in Fig. 8 again show
the effects of the field grading of Fig. 7. They occur close
15 to areas where field grading is required. The losses for the
ZnO lacquer are generally lower due to the more distinctive
10 switching behavior and a switching point located at a higher
Applied voltage voltage level.
SiC linear simulation
5 SiC nonlinear simulation
TABLE II
N UMERICAL R ESULTS .
ZnO nonlinear simulation
0 SiC lin SiC nonlin µVar nonlin
0 5 10 15
simulation time 1st 4 min 57 s 17 min 30 s 20 min 06 s
Length in cm → 2nd 46 min 08 s 676 min 42 s 1 758 min 17 s
Fig. 6. Voltage distribution along the surface. ohmic losses 1st 18.79 W 23.10 W 17.09 W
2nd 18.83 W 22.98 W 17.01 W
In Fig. 6 the voltage distributions of the simulations and
measurements along the end corona protection (ECP) starting In Table II the simulation times and the total ohmic losses
from the outer corona protection (OCP) are compared. All are compared. The time step length is 0.1 ms which results in
values are root mean square (RMS). They are not compared to a total of 600 time steps per simulation. The simulation times
the electrostatic voltmeter measurements due to open questions are significantly higher for second order, but their results are
concerning their validity as reported in [10]. The region where more accurate [16]. The plots in Fig. 6, 7 and 8 are all based
the voltage is higher than the applied voltage is smaller for on simulation results using second order elements and ansatz
the ZnO lacquer. In [7] this is also referred to as overvoltage. functions.
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x 10
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Andreas Lutz and Dr. Jiri
Lang from Von Roll Schweiz AG and Thomas A. Baumann
and Alexander Anderton from Alstom Technology Ltd. for
their helpful support and Michael Hagemeister from ABB
Switzerland Ltd. for providing the ZnO microvaristor ma-
terial. This work is supported by the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft
industrieller Forschungsvereinigungen e.V.” (AiF) under Grant
15455 N/2.