Study on Withstand Voltage Characteristics and Surface Electrical Field Distribution along Polluted Insulators

In this paper, experiments on artificial polluted insulator are conducted to study the 50% withstand voltage U₅₀ of artificial polluted suspension insulators under different levels of contamination and asymmetric contamination on the top/bottom surface. The electrical fields along the insulator surfaces under different scenarios, such as asymmetric contamination on top/bottom surface, and uneven circumferential distribution of surface contamination, have been calculated by the use of finite element analysis for field simulation. The simulated result shows that asymmetric top/bottom surface contamination has a greater impact on the insulator electrical field distribution, which has practical meanings to the anti-fouling design of the transmission line under different pollution level across the country.