External insulation characteristics of suspension insulators in an artificial sandstorm environment.

We performed experiments on suspension insulators string in an environment of artificial sandstorm and investigated the withstanding characteristics (difference of withstand voltages for sheds on different positions, relationship between withstand voltage and flow speed, effect of electrical field and flow field on withstand voltage). The results show that both the electrical field and the flow field significantly affect the withstand voltage. Moreover, from the comparison experiments with and without AC voltage, we believe that the difference of withstand voltage is closely related to the ratio of flow speed to the RMS value of the applied voltage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]