Novel Health Diagnostics Schemes Analyzing Corona Discharge of Operational Aerial Bundled Cables in Coastal Regions

Aerial Bundled Cables (ABCs) installed in coastal regions experience accelerated ageing due to rapid insulation degradation. Such damage causes unexpected and frequent cable failure. Sophisticated NDT methods are hence required for effective condition monitoring of ABCs. The corona discharge generated in vicinity of deteriorating ABCs is a consequence of damaged insulation. The discharge can be measured using super-heterodyned airborne ultrasonic listening. So measured corona discharge is intermittent and non-stationary, along the length of the ABC. Therefore, the usefulness of advanced adaptive techniques including Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), Ensemble EMD (EEMD) and Complementary Ensemble EMD (CEEMD) as Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs) extraction procedures is investigated for damage assessment of energized ABCs. Respective IMFs are used to compute Hilbert Huang Transform (HHT) spectrums. HHT spectrums are computed processing periodically acquired ultrasonic signals from different locations within the coastal region. All three IMF extraction techniques reveal a progressive shift in the signal energy spectrum towards lower frequency and, hence, are able to classify the health state of operational ABCs. The EMD, EEMD and CEEMD techniques are rated to be sequentially effective in damage quantification, with CEEMD being the most eloquent.