Application of Acoustic Emission Technology on Monitoring of Polluted Insulator Discharge

This paper presents a method for pollution insulator discharge monitoring based on acoustic emission (AE) technology. AE technology is a successful non-destructive detection method widely applied in many areas, including monitoring defects of electrical power equipments. In the process of partial discharge there is a continuous release of energy, including the emission of the acoustic energy. So the pollution severities of the insulators can be monitored and analyzed for flashover prediction and condition-based maintain, though online detecting the AE signals. Artificial contaminations tests proved that there is a corresponding relationship between the AE signals emitted by the polluted insulators and the development of contamination discharge.