Effects of thermal ageing and gamma radiations on ethylene-propylene based insulator of electric cables

This paper describes the effects of gamma radiation and thermal aging on cable insulator. The elastic properties degrade rapidly as the absorbed dose increases: the percent elongation at break attains nearly 100% value at 0.5 MGy absorbed dose. The gases evolved during the irradiation are mainly H2 and CO2; CO, CH4 and C2 H6 are present in much lower concentrations. The damage undergone depends strongly on sequential radiation and thermal aging; the analysis of accelerated life test data by means of the Arrhenius model gave (1.23+-0.25) eV for the activation energy, about 1 eV higher than the values reported in the literature