Full Scale Experiment for Vibration Analysis of Ice-Coated Bundled-Conductor Transmission Lines

Full scale experiment has received increasing attention in recent years for the reliability analysis of power supplies and power systems. In this paper, the vibration behaviours of conductors with and without D-section ice coatings are addressed by virtue of a field test platform consisting of the prototype of a transmission tower-line system. Utilizing fibre Bragg grating sensors, the vibration of conductors under artificial displacement and natural wind excitations are monitored, and their dynamic characteristics are assessed by the spectral analysis and the identification technique of Hilbert-Huang transform. It is revealed that the vibrations of ice-free and ice-coated multi-bundled conductors vary wildly despite under similar artificial displacements and natural wind excitations. The vibration of ice-coated conductors is mainly dominated by their low-order modes, especially in the frequency range of 0.24–2.0 Hz; while the vibration of ice-free conductors gains more benefits from their high-order modes. Compared to the ice-free conductors, the conductors with eccentric ice coating are prone to suffer from galloping under specified wind attack angle; although their vibrations are still controlled by the low-order modes, yet the frequency values of the dominant modes have changed from one wind attack angle case to another. This kind of frequency modulation phenomenon indicates that nonlinear vibration characteristics of ice-coated conductors might change under different wind conditions, which brings great challenges to the research of wind-induced vibration characteristics of ice-coated conductors.