Structural Performance of Porcelain and Polymer Post Insulators in High Voltage Electrical Switches
Publication: Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 30, Issue 5
Abstract
Post insulators are key components of most electrical substation equipment, but they are vulnerable during earthquakes. To better understand the seismic response of post insulators, this paper presents an experimental program that involved two types of 230-kV disconnect switches post insulators. Several solid ceramic (porcelain) and hollow-core composite (polymer) insulators were tested. The experiments consisted of static loading and dynamic shaking table tests. The static cyclic-loading, resonance-search, and pull tests—including material characterization—allowed the determination of the insulators lateral stiffness, fundamental frequency, and mode of failure. Moreover, failure loads and corresponding displacements and strains were determined. Additionally, the shaking table tests involved substructured dynamic tests of single porcelain and polymer post insulators. The main objective of the static and dynamic tests was to compare the behavior of porcelain and polymer post insulators under lateral loading. It was found that while the polymer insulators have much lighter mass than the porcelain ones, and in turn are more favorable from a seismic performance perspective; they have a comparable structural response to that of the porcelain insulators.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Contract 500-07-037, Task 2.3, Subcontract TRP-08-02, from the California Institute for Energy and Environment (CIEE). The authors thank Mr. I. Triki, Dr. S. Günay, Dr. S. Takhirov, and Mr. E. Fujisaki for their valuable technical input, and the staff at nees@berkeley and the Structures Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, for their efforts during the experimental program.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities
Volume 30 • Issue 5 • October 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 16, 2015
Accepted: Oct 1, 2015
Published online: Jan 6, 2016
Discussion open until: Jun 6, 2016
Published in print: Oct 1, 2016
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