Optimization of support insulators used in HV systems using support vector machine

In this paper support vector machine (SVM) has been used for optimization of electric field along the support insulators used in high voltage (HV) systems. To illustrate the effectiveness of SVM in optimizing electric field problems, two axi-symmetric cases have been considered one having an insulator with a contour that is quarter ellipse and the second one having a porcelain core solid insulator. The training and the test data for the SVM have been prepared by electrostatic field computation using indirect boundary element method (BEM). It is observed that once the SVM is trained it is able to give results with mean absolute error of less than 1.5% when compared with the analytically obtained results. The SVM designed for insulator contour optimization is first trained with the results obtained from electric field computation for some predetermined contours of the arrangements under consideration. Then the trained SVM is used to produce an optimized insulator contour in such a way that the desired stress distribution can be obtained on the insulator surface. The results obtained from the present study show that the trained SVM is adequately efficient to optimize insulator contours in order to have the desired stress distribution along the insulator surface