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This paper investigates the possibility of applying the time enlargement law for predicting how gas-insulated systems would behave when exposed to pulse voltage loads of different shapes. For this purpose, the validity of the time enlargement law in this case has first been tested and the most suitable theoretical distribution function of the breakdown time random variable established. Pulse characteristics of the investigated insulating system have subsequently been determined, by applying the time enlargement law to experimental values of the breakdown time random variable, obtained in measurements with predefined shapes of the voltage load. Pulse characteristics thus obtained were compared with the corresponding pulse characteristics derived from the area law. The results demonstrate the advantages of the time enlargement law method, especially in the case of a non-homogeneous electric field. The experiments were conducted with SF 6 gas, at different values of the pd product (pressure × inter-electrode gap), in a wide frequency range of applied pulse voltages, for a homogeneous, radial and point-plane electrode configuration.

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In this paper we expound on the procedure of determining the pulse tolerable voltage characteristic in the voltage-versus-time frame, by applying the time enlargement law to the breakdown time random variable, and using a single statistical sample for this variable, obtained through experiments with a predefined shape of the voltage load. The suggested algorithm has been experimentally tested for Ar, N 2 , and SF 6 gases, in the pd product (pressure  interelectrode gap) range from 10 À4 to 300 bar mm. The testing was performed by comparing the pulse tolerable voltage characteristic of a two-electrode configuration obtained by applying a particular shape of the pulse voltage load with the values corresponding to other pulse voltage shapes, covering a wide range of frequencies. Satisfactory results have been obtained concerning the applicability of the procedure, with certain minor limitations, which are pointed out.

Since the exact time a specific nucleus undergoes radioactive decay cannot be specified, nor can showers caused by secondary cosmic rays be predicted, statistical laws play an important role in almost all cases of experimental nuclear physics. This paper describes the method for the statistical treatment of nuclear counting results obtained experimentally by taking into account random variables pertaining to both frequent and infrequent phenomena. When processing counting measurement data, it is recommended to first discard spurious random variables that spoil the statistics by using Chauvenet’s criterion, as well as to test if the results in the statistical sample follow a unique statistical distribution by using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test (U-test). The verification of the suggested statistical method was performed on counting statistics obtained both from the radioactive source Cs-137 and background radiation, expected to follow the normal distribution and the Poisson distribution, respectively. Results show that the application of the proposed statistical method excludes random fluctuations of the radioactive source or of the background radiation from the total statistical sample, as well as possible inadequacies in the experimental set-up and show an extremely effective agreement of the theoretical distribution of random variables with the corresponding experimentally obtained random variables