In online mechanical property testing of high-voltage switches

the instrumentation

such as electricalstopwatch

oscilloscope and dynamic characteristic instrument

is not applicable and needs long detection cycle.This paper studies the application of the radio frequency method to field detection and evaluation of high-voltageswitch’s mechanical property. Firstly

the equivalence between the results from both RF method and traditional me-chanical property test is simulated and analyzed. Then

the performance of a high-voltage switch is measured contact-lessly and evaluated in the field based on RF method. Experimental results show that the equivalence between theRF method and the traditional detection method is good. When the RF time in different periods is more than 5 ms

the closing performance of a high-voltage switch is considered unqualified

while if the RF time in different periodsis more than 3 ms

the opening performance of a high-voltage switch is considered unqualified. Field evaluation re-sults show that the tested high-voltage switch is qualified in closing mechanical property but unqualified in openingmechanical property. It is concluded that by measuring the time difference of RF signal arriving antenna

the me-chanical property of high-voltage switch can be tested and evaluated.