The Time-Varying Characteristics of Overhead Electric Transmission Lines Considering the Induced-Ice-Shedding Effect

Abstract

More ice deposits accreted on conductors or ground wires may be shed off when an overhead electric transmission line is responding to shocks initiated by natural ice shedding. Ice shedding causes the global mass, stiffness, and damping of the tower-line system to vary with time, and the successive shedding effect beyond a trigger event has not been taken into account in previous studies due to the lack of an adequate ice detachment model. In this paper, the ice shedding effect induced by initial shocks was considered in finite element (FE) analysis. An ice detachment criterion, in the way of user-defined element rupture subroutine, was implemented into the main commercial nonlinear FE program ADINA, making it possible to consider the induced-ice-shedding effect numerically. The incremental FE form of the system’s governing equations of motion is presented where the variations in the mass and stiffness matrices of the system are taken into consideration. Taking a transmission line section following natural ice shedding as a case study, the results indicate that neglecting successive ice shedding underestimates the adverse influence of natural ice shedding. The proposed method can help to improve the design and evaluation of transmission lines in cold regions and to ensure their mechanical security.