As an alternative to traditional rectangular bus

insulated tubular bus has the characteristics of large cur-rent carrying capacity

high mechanical strength

strong electrical insulation properties and space saving. Insulatedbus is a new type of power transmission equipment with several decades of operating history and experience overseas.However

it’s applied relatively later in China

and its cognition level is also relatively backward. Based on analyz-ing the typical structures of three types of insulated tubular bus

the performance advantages and application fieldsof insulated tubular bus are briefly stated. And then this paper summarizes the current development and research sta-tus of insulated tubular bus in China and abroad

as well as the problems in production

installation and operation.Finally

it is concluded that the future research direction and development trend is to improve the comprehensive per-formance of the insulated tubular bus

to restrain the current situation of frequent failures effectively

and to improvethe operational reliability of such equipment.