Morphological Aspects of Water Treeing in $Co^{60}$ $\gamma$-ray Irradiated Polyethylene

$Co^{60}$ $\gamma$-선으로 조사된 Polyethylene에서 수트리 현상의 구조적 측면에 관한 연구

This work is aimed to clarify the effect of only crosslinking of polyethylene on the water tree propagation and thus the crosslinking of LDPE was made by use of $Co^{60}$ $\gamma$-ray irradiation at room temperature. For this purpose, before water tree testing under same test conditions, injection molded samples were made of LDPE using CNRS laboratory model and also some of them were irradiated under different dose rate for crosslinking. Afterwards, the aged specimens were put into microscopic investigation as a mean to compare their different morphological aspects by use of SEM for the fractured surface. The SEM observation points out that the untreed region in the irradiated PE shows the densed structure whereas that in the LDPE is not closely packed. Also in the water treed region of LDPE, the density and the dimension of voids are higher than those in irradiated PE. Based on our results, it seems that the difference in the PE structure could sufficiently contribute to cause the different water tree propagation of these materials.