TY - EJOU AU - Lv, Yukun AU - Wang, Yuechi AU - Wang, Jiawen TI - Influence of Electrical Field Distortions Induced by Water Droplets on the Contamination Characteristics of an Insulator T2 - Fluid Dynamics \& Materials Processing PY - 2021 VL - 17 IS - 5 SN - 1555-2578 AB - When separated water droplets condense on the surface of a composite insulator, the electrical field on the insulator surface is distorted. In turn, such distortions change the trajectories of pollution particles. In this study, the COMSOL software is used to simulate such a process for the FXBW4-10/100 composite insulator with or without water droplets condensation under a 10 kV DC voltage. The influence of the wind speed and particles concentration on the contamination characteristics of the considered 110 kV insulator is analyzed. The results show that: 1) in the presence of water droplets on the insulator surface, the ratio of electrical field force and gravity acting on the particles is large; 2) the contamination on the insulator surface increases with the wind speed; 3) when the wind speed is small, the relationship between the contamination amount and the pollution concentration is essentially linear. KW - Water droplets; composite insulator; numerical simulation; electrical field distortion; contamination characteristic DO - 10.32604/fdmp.2021.016602