Research on the sheds structure design of the composite insulators used in the strong wind area in UHV transmission lines

For the wide area and variable weather in China, the composite insulators will endure several terrible conditions. Strong wind area is very special in China or the other worldwide places. Now the transmission lines problems caused by wind are mainly focusing on tower strength, conductor galloping and external insulation selection. The sheds cracks of the composite insulators at 750kV AC lines in Xinjiang province is very new as a topic. We blew the composite insulators in the wind tunnel and showed that the sheds would vibrate at very high frequency when the wind was stronger than 30 m/s which would cause the sheds crack. In this paper, we simulated with ANSYS and other software, and indicated that the sheds structure parameters would influence the sheds performance in the high speed wind. To reduce the sheds vibration, we give the suggestion for designing new different composite insulators.