Influence of Electrical Field Distortions Induced by Water Droplets on the Contamination Characteristics of an Insulator

When separated water droplets condense on the surface of a composite insulator,the electrical field on the insulator surface is distorted.In turn,such distortions change the trajectories of pollution particles.In this study,the COMSOL software is used to simulate such a process for the FXBW4-10/100 composite insulator with or without water droplets condensation under a 10 kV DC voltage.The influence of the wind speed and particles concentration on the contamination characteristics of the considered 110 kV insulator is analyzed.The results show that:1)in the presence of water droplets on the insulator surface,the ratio of electrical field force and gravity acting on the particles is large;2)the contamination on the insulator surface increases with the wind speed;3)when the wind speed is small,the relationship between the contamination amount and the pollution concentration is essentially linear.