Feasibility Study on Detecting Glaze Icing Load of Composite Insulators by Using Fiber Bragg Grating

Monitoring icing conditions of composite insulators are an essential part of Smart Grid construction. The conventional detection methods are difficult to monitor icing conditions of composite insulators in the harsh environment. Therefore, this paper embedded a Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) array into a composite insulator for detecting glaze icing load. By hanging weights on the edge of the insulator shed, the simulated glaze icing load experiments were performed to verify the feasibility of the proposed method. The results suggest that different simulated glaze icing load can differ the FBG wavelength shifts, and the FBG wavelength shifts linearly relate to the simulated glaze icing load on the insulator shed. Thus, the experimental results indicate that FBGs embedded into the composite insulator can detect glaze icing load in the laboratory.