Nonlinear ultrasonic nondestructive detection and modelling of kissing defects in high voltage composite insulators

This paper investigates a feasible nondestructive method for micron-sized kissing defects in the composite insulators, which are commonly utilized in ultra-high voltage (UHV) power grid. In this paper, cylindrical adhesive contact model was established to describe the obvious distortion of ultrasound propagation caused by kissing defects on the polymeric interface of composite insulators. The ultrasonic nonlinearity parameter was measured for each of the kissing defective and intact specimens. Moreover, the theoretical analysis has been proved by the test results on the kissing defective samples, which indicates that the 0.7 μm kissing defects existed in the composite insulators could be successfully recognized by the nonlinear ultrasonic methods and the nonlinearity is reduced by interface roughness.