Study on Interface Performance of Fiber Optic Hard Composite Insulator

Fiber optic composite insulator has the function of online monitoring of insulator operation status and real-time communication. At present, interface problems are common in fiber optic composite insulator. Flashover and internal insulation accidents occur during operation, and the operating life is much lower than that of ordinary composite insulator. In this paper, a new design of optical fiber composite insulator is proposed. The cycloaliphatic epoxy resin with good interface performance is used as the coating layer of optical fiber and the housing material of insulator, which reduces the number of interfaces between core- fiber-housing to improve the interface performance of optical fiber insulator. The samples were subjected to a long-term boiling aging test to measure the interface performance gap between the fiber optic hard composite insulator, the silicone rubber fiber optic composite insulator and the ordinary composite insulator by leakage current. Comparing the leakage current measurements, the interface performance of fiber optic hard composite insulator is better than that of ordinary fiber optic composite insulator in the same boiling aging time. The increase of the number of implanted optical fibers has no significant effect on the interface performance. This study shows that by using cycloaliphatic epoxy resin as the coating layer of optical fiber and the housing material of insulator can effectively improve the interface performance, which lays a foundation for long-term operation monitoring in the future.