Surface Insulation Performance of 3D Printed Functionally Graded Insulator Fabricated by Active-Mixing Fused Deposition Modeling (AM-FDM)

In this paper, the surface insulation performance of 3D-printed functionally graded material (FGM) insulators are investigated. These FGM insulators were fabricated through a self-developed 3D printing technique, which is called as Active-Mixing Fused Deposition Modeling (AM-FDM). Based on a prototypical AM-FDM platform, truncated cone insulators with heterogeneous relative permittivity were fabricated. Then, the surface flashover voltage of 3D-printed d-FGM insulators were tested under 50Hz AC voltage in both air and SF6 atmosphere. Preliminary results indicates a large increase (maximum 41%) in surface flashover voltage, which is especially significant when high pressure SF6 atmosphere is utilized. This research provides a novel and universal approach (i.e. AM-FDM 3D printing) for the fabrication of d-FGM objects, and verifies the feasibility of d-FGM in the improvement of surface insulation performance.