An acoustic emission method for on-line monitoring the contamination-causing flashover of insulator

This paper presents an acoustic emission (AE) monitoring method. When a partial discharge occurs, there is an instantaneous release of energy, some of which is emitted as acoustic energy. The pollution severities of insulators in-service can be monitored and accordingly threaten to the insulation of power grid is evaluated by detecting the sound signals. To prove this AE monitoring method, artificial contaminations experiments are carried out. The essential information about the relationship of AE signal and PD are obtained in different moments of the whole process of flashover. The studied method is a new way of AE technique in monitoring and characterizing defects of electrical power equipments in-service.