A Three-Dimensional Analysis of Silicone Rubber Insulators Under Different Environmental Conditions Considering the Corona Rings Effect

Since the insulators of transmission lines are exposed to different environmental conditions, it is important task to study insulators performance under different conditions. In this paper, silicone rubber insulators performance under different environmental conditions including rainy, icy, salt and cement are proposed and exactly is studied. Electric fields (E-fields) and voltage distributions along the insulator under various conditions have been evaluated. Moreover, the corona rings effects on insulator performance under these conditions have been presented. A 230 kV silicone rubber insulator is selected, modeled and simulated with finite element method (FEM) using the COMSOL software. The simulation is repeated for different environmental conditions and efficiency of corona ring for each scenario is evaluated. The results indicate that environmental conditions have a significant effect on the insulator performance and the corona ring somewhat alleviate the adverse effect of environmental conditions on the insulator performance.