A Simple Axisymmetric Model for Calculation of Potential Distribution along Ice-Covered Post Station Insulators during a Melting Period

Abstract

This paper presents a new modeling approach for faster calculation of potential distribution along full scale post station insulators covered with ice under melting conditions. The proposed approach consists in modeling the conductive water film at the ice surface using a specific boundary condition implemented in a commercial finite element software Comsol Multiphysicsreg. The results obtained shows than axisymmetric modeling can be a good alternative to 3D modeling in order to compute accurately potential distribution along an ice surface. Such approach was then used to model a full scale EHV insulator formed of two units of standard post station insulator covered by wet-grown ice.