To reveal the contamination characteristics of rod-type suspension composite insulator

COMSOL is employed to simulate the contamination characteristics of the composite insulator in the wind tunnel at North China Electric Power University

and the simulation results are compared with the test ones from the same wind tunnel.It is shown that the simulated quantity of contamination is in same order of magnitude as that of test one and they both display a V-shape changing trend with DC voltage

which confirms the rationality of the simulation method.Further

a simulation study is conducted on the natural contamination characteristics of the insulator to understand the effects of contamination concentration and voltage type on the natural contamination characteristics of insulators.The results show that:1)the quantity of contamination on the insulator surface increases with the contamination concentration;2)the increasing rate of the quantity of contamination has an inverse relationship with the contamination concentration;3)under the same conditions

the quantity of contamination on whole insulator surface or on umbrella skirts gets the maximum under DC voltage

and the distribution of contamination under AC voltage is similar to that without voltage;and 4)the difference of the quantity of contamination

on the umbrella skirts between under DC voltage and without voltage is approximately W-shaped.