A new methodology was developed to observe and measure tool wear during the die compaction process. The newly developed method is a non-destructive test using silicon rubber to transcript die surface profiles. Tool wear was observed and measured by recording surface roughness and diameter of the cylindrical die replicas on a surface profiler including weight loss in the die. To validate this procedure, an aluminum alloy powder without lubricant was compacted to examine the effect on die wear. The die materials were machined from several wrought and composite materials. A further dimension to the program was the variance of compaction pressures and lubricants.

Recently high temperature vulcanized (HTV) silicone rubber (SIR) / polymeric/composite insulators are gaining wider acceptance as overhead transmission line insulators for extra high voltage (EHV) and ultra-high voltage (UHV) systems due to some promising features like hydrophobicity recovery, light weight, ease of handling and installation, better pollution ashover performance, admirable resistance against vandalism etc. Since polymeric insula-tors are of recent origin, their long-term eld performance is yet to be understood. Owing to their organic nature, and exposure to environmental stresses like pollution, temperature, UV radiation, humidity, fog, rain etc., the insulator performance degrades over a period. The sheds/petticoats of the insulators become wettable leading to frequent ashover in humid and contaminated environment. Hence, long term reliability of the composite insulators is of foremost concern to the power utilities. The available literature on the long term eld performance of these insulators for di erent climatic conditions and under multiple environ-mental stresses for both the HTV SIR and Liquid Silicone Rubber (LSR) is scant. Also there is no reference standard for evaluation of these insulators for pollution/contamination test methods in the laboratory. However currently, CIGRE Work Group is working towards the standardization of the test methods for arti cial pollution tests for polymeric insulators. The thesis addresses some of the issues in detail. In the first part of the thesis, a new and simple pre-treatment methodology to achieve uniform contamination layer on inherently hydrophobic HTV SIR Insulator samples is presented for laboratory pollution performance evaluation. The surface water level di usion in the dipping period is found to make the insulator surface temporarily hydrophilic. Then the uniform contamination layer is applied by dipping the sample immediately in the pollution slurry. Exhaustive experiments were conducted on full scale SIR insulators as well as SIR slabs to investigate the hydrophilicity appearance on the SIR surface. A specially fabricated arrangement for assessment of Wettability Class (WC) is made as per IEC stds. The results of WC measurement and wet ashover studies support the temporary reduction in hydrophobicity of SIR due to dipping phase in the proposed pre-treatment methodology. The next part of the thesis presents the results for the effeect of long term thermal aging experimentation conducted on HTV SIR with difffeerent degrees of pollution (medium, heavy), the effeect of arid desert climate on polymeric insulators is studied. The experimental set-up consists of controlled HVAC source, temperature controlled furnace with a provision for high voltage (HV) and Leakage Current (LC) monitoring, a Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO), compact DAQ-9201 of National Instruments operated in LabVIEW platform etc. Two types of HTV SIR Insulators are considered for the study. Flat slabs as well as full-scale insulator samples of creepage length 725 mm are stressed simultaneously to simulate the in-service condition. The experimentation is conducted for about 575 hours with application of 21.0 kVrms at 60oC. The results of the hydrophobicity recovery for thermally aged contaminated polymeric insulators are reported. Besides, monitoring electrical and mechanical proper-ties, changes in material properties of SIR are also analyzed using Physiochemical analysis techniques like Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Thermo-Gravimetric Analysis (TGA), Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). Some of the key findings of the study are increased surface oxidation, surface roughness and mechanical stress due to thermal aging of polymeric insulators. Experimental investigations show that the characteristics of power frequency component of leakage current can be linked with thermal aging of SIR. Further, a unique climatic aging experimental facility is established to evaluate the long-term reliability of SIR under environmental stresses like UV, Humidity, temperature and applied electric stress. The investigations are conducted on two different types of HTV SIR and LSR at samples as well as full-scale insulator samples. The experimentation is conducted for 500 hours with 10.0 kVrms at 50oC, with 85% humidity and 1 W/m2 UV ir-radiation which is in accordance with the aging cycle specified in IEC standard. The results of the comparative studies conducted for the electrical, mechanical and material properties indicate leakage current pulses, brittleness, Salt deposition for multistress aged samples. In summary, an attempt has been made to contribute a pollution methodology with sim-ple pre-treatment technique for inherently hydrophobic HTV SIR surface to achieve better uniformity of contamination layer. Also, electro-thermal and multiple stresses investigations were conducted for long term performance on polymeric insulators.

<div>This body of work examines analytical and numerical models to simulate the response of structures in shock absorption applications. Specifically, the work examines the prediction of cushion curves of polymer foams, and a topological examination of a $\chi$ shape unit cell found in architected mechanical elastomeric metamaterials. The $\chi$ unit cell exhibits the same effective stress-strain relationship as a closed cell polymer foam. Polymer foams are commonly used in the protective packaging of fragile products. Cushion curves are used within the packaging industry to characterize a foam's impact performance. These curves are two-dimensional representations of the deceleration of an impacting mass versus static stress. The main drawback with cushion curves is that they are currently generated from an exhaustive set of experimental test data. This work examines modeling the shock response using a continuous rod approximation with a given impact velocity in order to generate cushion curves without the need of extensive testing. In examining the $\chi$ unit cell, this work focuses on the effects of topological changes on constitutive behavior and shock absorbing performance. Particular emphasis is placed on developing models to predict the onset of regions of quasi-zero-modulus (QZM), the length of the QZM region and the cushion curve produced by impacting the unit cell. The unit cell's topology is reduced to examining a characteristic angle, defining the internal geometry with the cell, and examining the effects of changing this angle.</div><div>However, the characteristic angle cannot be increased without tradeoffs; the cell's effective constitutive behavior evolves from long regions to shortened regions of quasi-zero modulus. Finally, this work shows that the basic $\chi$ unit cell can be tessellated to produce a nearly equivalent force deflection relationship in two directions. The analysis and results in this work can be viewed as new framework in analyzing programmable elastomeric metamaterials that exhibit this type of nonlinear behavior for shock absorption.</div>