Study on wind tunnel test and galloping of iced quad bundle conductor

Abstract Conductor galloping is a common phenomenon during the operation of the transmission line, which can easily result in electrical and mechanical accidents such as tower collapses and interphase flashover. And aerodynamic parameters are key factors to study galloping. In this paper, the aerodynamic parameters of crescent-shaped and D-shaped conductors, which are two typical iced conductors, are studied by wind tunnel test. The instability analysis is carried out according to Den Hartog instability mechanism and the linear galloping model. The results indicate that wind velocity, ice thickness, conductor type, bundle spacing and splitting number all have a great influence on aerodynamic parameters and conductor galloping. Then the galloping situation of a 500 kV quad bundle conductor are simulated according to the parameters obtained from wind tunnel test. The calculating results correspond with the actual situation. The results obtained in this paper are important to predict the galloping amplitudes under different weather conditions and investigate anti-galloping technology of iced quad bundle conductor.