Flashover Voltage Prediction of Polymeric Insulators in Presence of Surface Charge and Pollution using Artificial Neural Network

In this paper, the effect of surface charges and pollution on flashover voltage of polymeric insulators under DC voltage have been investigated and analyzed. For this purpose, four types of polymeric insulators with different profiles have been selected and then experimental tests of DC flashover voltage have been performed. According to the obtained results, with increasing pollution in presence of positive surface charges flashover voltage reduce, but negative charges increase it. Also in this paper, a model based on geometric parameters including specific leakage distance, shed spacing to shed depth ratio, amount of surface charges and pollution is proposed using an artificial neural network. The comparison of the obtained results from experimental tests and ANN model show that the results of ANN are consistent with experimental tests.