Space Electric Field Characteristics of Silicone Rubber Insulator Pollution Flashover and Its Application in Flashover Prewarning

Pollution flashover accidents are still happening in areas with severe environmental conditions, and the existing pollution flashover warning methods are still very simple. In this article, the space electric field characteristics of silicone rubber insulators during pollution flashover were revealed, and the application of the space electric field signal (SEFS) for pollution flashover prewarning was proposed for the first time. During the research, artificial pollution tests were conducted to obtain the SEFS waveform, and then its time-frequency characteristic parameters under different pollution flashover stages were extracted and analyzed. Research results indicate that, according to the SEFS amplitude variation, the development of pollution flashover can be divided into three zones: safe zone, dangerous zone, and critical zone. The four characteristic parameters, the rms increase factor, maximum value increase factor, peak factor, and third harmonic factor change obviously during different flashover stages. Combining the SEFS parameters and the pattern recognition algorithm, the recognition of pollution flashover zones is realized, which can be directly used to form the pollution flashover prewarning strategy.