Three-dimensional numerical simulation of rime ice accumulation on silicone rubber insulator and its experimental verification in the natural environment

Icing on transmission lines is a challenging problem in the world. Rime icing on silicone rubber insulator was taken as research object in this paper. The position coordinates of supercooled water droplets collided with the surface of the insulator were extracted, the local collision coefficient (E) of the droplet was calculated by a triangular area ratio method. The ???point-line-face-solid??? ice shape reconstruction algorithm was proposed to realize three-dimensional numerical simulation of rime ice accretion on the insulator. The results shown that the effect of median volume diameter (MVD) of the droplet on the E is greater than that of wind speed (v). The most serious icing occurs on the rod and the edge of the shed. Due to the shielding effect of the shed, the icing on the rod presents the shape of the nose. The length, thickness and amount of rime icing on the insulator calculated by the model increases with time, whose average errors with that obtained by the tests are 7.68%, 7.96%, 10.34%, and 9.45%, respectively. Moreover, the simulated icing distribution is well consistent with the experimental results. Therefore, the effectiveness of the numerical simulation method was proved in the present research.