Abstract

This article presents the implementation of two state-of-art clustering techniques in the ultrasonic detection of partial discharge (PD) activity in a conventional tip-plate topology prototype. Both methods, chromatic technique (CT) and Time-Frequency (TF) mapping, were originally conceived to differentiate the different sources of partial discharges (corona, internal or superficial) in medium and high voltage isolations, and proved to have good sensitivity and tendencies, consistent with the increase of PD activity in the prototype. Within the evaluated parameters, the equivalent bandwidth, part of the CT, as well as the standard deviation in frequency of the TF maps proved to have the best correlation with respect to the increase in voltage between the electrodes. A bidimensional map considering the two CT evaluated parameters was proposed, which can be used in more complex topologies of PD generators