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Measurement of electric field distribution along composite insulators by

integrated optical electric field sensor

Article in IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation · March 2008

DOI: 10.1109/T-DEI.2008.4446764 · Source: IEEE Xplore

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302 R. Zeng et al.: Measurement of Electric Field Distribution Along Composite Insulators by Integrated Optical Electric Field Sensor

Measurement of Electric Field Distribution Along Composite

Insulators by Integrated Optical Electric Field Sensor
Rong Zeng, Yun Zhang, Weiyuan Chen and Bo Zhang
State Key Lab of Power Systems, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

ABSTRACT
In order to meet the demands for the electric field measurement along the composite
insulators simultaneously, such as intensive signal, fine insulation, passive and small
size, a novel measurement system based on the core device, the integrated
electro-optic sensor, was developed. First, the theory of the system and the sensor
were introduced. Second, after fabrication, the input/output character was obtained
and the calibration was implemented between two parallel square metal planes under
power frequency. By optimum design, this kind of novel sensor was suitable for
insulated, intensive (> 250 kV/m), small size (55 mm x 2 mm x 1 mm) electric field
measurement. Third, the axial and radial electric field distribution of the insulators
were measured carefully in laboratory, and by combining the BEM and CSM method,
the electric field of the same insulators was numerically calculated. Finally, the
measurement and calculated results of electric field distribution were compared and
the relationship between them were analyzed. This comparison verified the suitability
and importance of the measurement system.

Index Term - composite insulators, electric field measurement, integrated

electro-optic field sensor, BEM, CSM.

there were some disadvantages. The contact of the sensor with

1 INTRODUCTION the insulator will affect the original voltage distribution
COMPOSITE insulators have been widely used in high because of the dispersed capacitance changed by the sensor.
voltage transmission lines in China for many years [1], because And these methods were almost not suitable for the composite
of its lightness, advantage in anti-pollution, and little insulators.
maintenance in operation. The uneven distribution of the The direct methods were studied from 1990’s, mainly used
electric field upon the surface of the insulators, which is caused for the online diagnosis of the insulators, for example, the tester
by the structure design and the material, is one of the reasons for porcelain suspension insulators were developed by
for partial discharge, or even breakdown. So, it is very Hydro-Quebec [8]. The electric field of 735 kV and 315 kV
important to get to know the electric field distribution at power insulators were measured online by this tester [9]. And power
frequency, which will be very useful for the optimum design of corporations of America and Mexico diagnosed the nonceramic
the insulators, the confirmation of the parameters of the grading insulators aged in a salt fog chamber by field sensor [10].
ring and supplying guidance for the research of online In recent years, great advancement has been accomplished
diagnosis. and some new sensors, such as the thermocouple field sensor
Measurement is the most useful and directly method to and the diode rectified field sensor have been developed. For
acquire the distribution of the electric field and can be sorted instance, the potential free spherical sensor has been developed
into direct and indirect methods. by Feser and Hartings for the electric field measurement of the
The indirect method gets the field by means of the insulators and the research of corona character near high
measurement of the distribution of potential on the insulators. voltage electrode [11-13]. But there are still some problems to
The most popular used instrument for voltage distribution be overcome. First, the size of the sensor was a little big that it
could not be used in the precisely measurement and the
method were metal spherical dipole [2-6] and parallel high
intrusion of the metal sensor will distort the original field so
resistance divider [7]. These kinds of methods were simple, but
much that the error of the measurement was too big. Second,
these sensor and transmission system were active, and the energy
Manuscript received on 20 December 2006, in final form 8 August 2007. supply for the sensor will affect the field too seriously [14].

1070-9878/08/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE

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IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Vol. 15, No. 1; February 2008 303

For the difficulty of precisely measurement of the electric modulated laser signal is transposed into a voltage signal by the
field, many numerical methods, such as charge simulation optical receiver. In the proposed configuration, a distributed
method (CSM), finite element method (FEM), boundary feedback (DFB) laser diode (LD) optical receiver is adopted
element method (BEM) and finite difference method (FDM), which has low noise and narrower spectral width. And the
are used to calculate the electric field distribution of the voltage signal detected by the digital signal processing system
insulators [15]. But as we can see, according to the complex will reflect the original electric field signal.
structure of the insulators and connected conductors, the The mostly adopted electro-optic effect for electric field
numerical methods still can not calculate the electric field very measurement is the well-known Pockels effect [18,19].
accurately. Traditionally, by using the electro-optic crystal, the sensor is
In order to overcome above difficulties, following special suitable for very intensive electric field measurement.
demands for the measurement system, such as intensive signal However, in order to couple the light into the sensor-head from
measurable, fine insulation, and small size, as smaller distortion fibers, this kind of measurement system must be constructed
as possible to the original field, must be satisfied with many of dispersed optical components, which makes it
simultaneously. In this paper, a novel integrated electro-optic such a complex optic system, and obviously a great limitation
sensor, based on electro-optical crystals such as LiNbO3, for their application in field measurement.
LiTaO3 [16,17] have been developed. Compared with Based on the semiconductor technology, integrated optics
traditional measurement method, the proposed integrated sensor, on the other hand, has the advantage of not requiring
electro optic sensor is a passive one and has a compact size. The lensing systems. It is easy to install and no need for earth-quake
field distortion due to the sensor is therefore minimized. proofing because the whole system is fully integrated before
The laboratory measurement of the electric field of being placed in the measurement environment. Besides, the
composite insulators was carried out carefully, and the electric size of the passive sensor head can be significantly minimized
field of the same insulators is calculated by combining BEM and this leads to less distortion to the electric field distribution.
and CSM. The comparison between the measurement and the Therefore, it is a suitable method to apply the electro-optic
calculation results are illustrated in detail in this paper too. sensor to the measurement of intensive electric field in high
voltage environment.

2 THEORY AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 2.2 THE THEORY OF THE SENSOR

MEASUREMENT SYSTEM The fundamental principle of the electro-optic modulation
can be found in some other papers [20]. The refracting index of
2.1 THE STRUCTURE OF THE MEASUREMENT some Electro-optic crystals, such as Lithium Niobate, will
SYSTEM change when an electric field is put on it.
The configuration of the measurement system is illustrated in Δne = rE (1)
Figure 1. It has four parts: laser source, electro-optic sensor, where Une is the change of the refractive index of the crystal
optical receiver, and digital signal processing system. A 50 and r is the electro-optic coefficient corresponding to the
m-long polarization maintaining fiber (PMF) connects the polarization of the electric field E.
sensor to the optical laser source, and a 50 m-long single mode According to the fundamental principle of Mach-Zehnder
fiber (SMF) connects the sensor to the optical receiver. The modulator, the modulator output of optical power can be
length of the two fibers ensures the security distance from the expressed as the following equation [21].
high voltage devices to the observation point.
Pi
Po = [1 + cos(Δϕ 0 + ϕ )] (2)
2
where Po and Pi are the output and input laser power
respectively. Uφ0 is the intrinsic phase difference between two
waveguides and φ is phase difference added by the
environmental electric field, liner to Une. When the intrinsic
phase difference between the two optical paths is π/2, the
output of optical power will be
Pi
Figure 1. The configuration of the measurement system. Po = [1 − sin ϕ ] (3)
2
The laser source operates in CW mode and the output laser is
a linear polarized optical beam at the wavelength of 1550 nm, Obviously, the output power of laser is linear to the electric
which is widely used for telecommunication systems. The input field imposed on the sensor.
laser signal is modulated in the integrated electro-optic field
sensor by the environmental electric field, and the output Po = a + kha E (4)

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304 R. Zeng et al.: Measurement of Electric Field Distribution Along Composite Insulators by Integrated Optical Electric Field Sensor

From above equation it can be found that the value of the 3 THE CALIBRATION OF THE
electric field can be acquired by measuring the output laser MEASUREMENT SYSTEM
power, when the sensor is working in the static working zone.
In order to acquire the input/output characteristics of the
measurement system and to evaluate the feasibility for
2.3 THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE insulators electric field measurement, the calibration
SENSOR experiment based on parallel square metal planes was carried
One of the structure of the sensors using a Mach-Zehnder out as following.
interferometer is illustrated in Figure 2. To obtain a large
driving voltage, the two optical paths are 40 mm long and the 3.1 THE CONFIGURATION OF THE CALIBRATION
distance between them was 60 µm. There is a path difference of EXPERIMENT
one-quarter of the wavelength of light between these two arms
in order to form an optical bias of π/2, which is desirable for the According to standard GB/T12720 (1991), the standard
sensor to be driven without a DC bias voltage and for the output electric field for calibration was derived from the parallel
of the sensor to be linear with the input electric field. square planes. The calibration system must meet the following
requirements. First, the space between the electrodes must be
longer than 1.5 times of the side size of the sensor. Second, the
side size of the metal plane must be more than 3 times of the
Electrode
space of the sensor. Third, the distance between the sensor and
Waveguide the edge of the square plane will be not less than 3 times of the
space between the electrodes.
Input Y branch Output Y branch
In consideration of above requirements and the size of the
sensor, a standard power frequency calibration system was
built. The square planes were made of steel, and the thickness
z Dipole was 1 mm. The upper electrode was connected with power
y
LiNbO3 substrate
3
frequency high voltage signal and the lower one was connected
with ground wire. The distance between these electrodes was
Figure 2. One kind of he structure of the sensor.
140 mm, and the side size is 800 mm, which can ensure to
acquire uniform electric field at the central area. The edge of
The electrodes on the modulator were formed by depositing each plane was polished to be smooth and the corner of the
5 mm long gold film, and the distance between two adjacent plane was shaped as circular arc to avoid the existence of
electrodes is 90 µm. The dipole was made up of triangle-shaped corona.
gold film, which was connected to the electrode. When an
electric field is applied to the dipole, a voltage is induced across 3.2 THE CALIBRATION RESULT OF THE
the electrode of the modulator. The optical modulator converts MEASUREMENT SYSTEM
this voltage to an optical signal, the ac component of which is
proportional to the electric field strength. During the calibration, the output power of the laser kept at 5
mW. In the power frequency electric field, the output signal of
the optical receiver was a sine signal added on the dc bias, as
Crystal illustrated in equation (4). The dc bias was filtered by setting
Electrode/Dipole
/Waveguide the input mode of the digital signal processing system to be ac
coupling.
The sensor was placed at the center of the square, equal
distance to each electrode. The voltage was boosted up by the
transformer and put on the parallel square electrodes. Different
amplitude of electric field was acquired by regulating the
autotransformer. The input voltage was increased step by step
from 100 V to 50 kV and then decreased to 100 V with same
sequence. At each step point, the input voltage and the output of
Figure 3. The integrated electro-optic field sensor after fabrication. optical receiver were recorded. The high voltage was detected
by the resistance divider and the electric field was acquired by
Having finished the design of the sensor, the sensor is the sensor. Both voltage signals were sent to the same digital
fabricated by forming two optical paths obtained by diffusing signal processing device in different channel. These sequences
titanium in a 55 mm×6 mm×1 mm X-cut LiNbO3 as illustrated were repeated 3 times and the average value of each measure
in Figure 3[22]. point were calculated.

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IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Vol. 15, No. 1; February 2008 305

Totally, three different directions of the sensor were where E is the input electric field in RMS (kV/m), and Vo is the
calibrated, one was the maximum output direction and other sensor output voltage in RMS (mV).
two were crossed directions. All the results were drawn in
Figure 4. The input electric field and sensor output voltage 4 ELECTRIC FIELD MEASUREMENT OF
were both power frequency RMS value. THE INSULATORS
4.1 THE SCHEME OF THE MEASUREMENT
1200
Ma x i mu m Di r e c t i o n
1100 The experiment simulated the arrangement of suspension
Di r e c t i o n 2
1000 insulators on the tower. The configuration was shown in Figure
Di r e c t i o n 3
(mV)

900
6. The insulators were suspended on the crossbeam, which was
800
700
well grounded. The radius of the crossbeam was 2 cm and
out put

600 length was 2 m. A thin horizontal transmission line connected

500 the power frequency transformer and the bottom of the
400 insulators. The electric field sensor was fixed by an insulated
Se n s o r

300 bracket, which ensured the proper position of the sensor. The
200 output voltage of the power frequency transformer kept 35 kV
100
during the experiment, and the output of the optical receiver
0
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 was recorded at different measuring points.
El e c t r i c f i e l d (kV/m)

Figure 4. The input/output characteristics of the measurement system.

It can be found that there was a most sensitive direction of

the sensor, which was same to the direction of the dipole and
the maximum changed direction of Une. At other two cross
directions, the output of the sensor just were 3.7% and 2.3% of
that of the maximum direction, respectively. That is to say, the
sensor was direction sensitive, which was a very good property
for power frequency measurement.
But we can see from the input/output curve that the sensor
output began to be saturated from 250 kV/m electric field input.
That can be explained by equation (3), the sensor output was
sine relation to the input electric field. But in our insulators
measurement, the amplitude is no more than 200 kV/m. The
curves between 0-250 kV/m are shown in Figure 5 and the
linear fit curve is drawn in the figure too.
Figure 6. The arrangement of the experiment and the shape of the insulators.
500 Maxium Direction
Direction 2 The insulators composed of 5 big sheds and 4 small sheds.
Direction 3
400 Linear Fit Curve The diameter of the big shed was 145 mm and the diameter of
Sensor output (mV)

small shed was 110 mm. The thickness of shed edge was 2 mm
300 and the thickness of the shed root was 12 mm. The diameter of
the Fiberglass-Reinforced Plastics (FRP) rod was 27 mm.
200 Some other sizes of the insulators were drawn in Figure 6.
100
4.2 THE MEASUREMENT OF AXIAL ELECTRIC
0
0 50 100 150 200 250
FIELD COMPONENT
Electric field (kV/m) The axial component (direction z in Figure 6.) of the electric
field was measured first. The measured positions were selected
Figure 5. The input/output curve in linear zone. at the middle of each two sheds, and were number from 1 to 10
From Figure 5, it can be found that the output of the sensor at the sequence from high to low potential, which were
was linear to the input electric field, when the electric field is illustrated in Figure 6 as hollow circles. The measurement
less than 250 kV/m. By linear fitting, the relationship of the repeated 6 times at direction r, when the distance to the center
sensor output voltage and the electric field is as below. of the insulators’ axis varies from 20 mm to 70 mm, every 10
mm. And 6 groups of data have been acquired, which are
Vo = 2.243E (5) shown in part 6 of this paper.

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306 R. Zeng et al.: Measurement of Electric Field Distribution Along Composite Insulators by Integrated Optical Electric Field Sensor

4.3 THE MEASUREMENT OF RADIAL ELECTRIC leakage currents on the segments and q is the vector of the
FIELD COMPONENT charge on boundary elements.
Second, according to the circuit model, the equations of
The radial electric field component (direction r in Figure conductors were built by MoM.
6.) below each shed was measured too. The measurement
⎡I ⎤
positions were selected just below each shed, and were
number from 1 to 9 at the sequence from high to low potential,
[A11 A12 ] ⎢ ⎥ = U (8)
⎣q⎦
which were illustrated in Figure 6 as solid circles. The surface
where A11 is a coefficient matrix of the segments, and A12 is the
of the sensor contacted with the surface of the shed as close as
coefficient matrix of the boundary elements, U is the vector of
possible. The measurement repeated 4 times at direction r
voltages on the segment.
when the distance to the center of the insulators’ axis varies
Finally, by combining equations (7) and (8), after all the
from 20 mm to 50 mm, every 10 mm. And 4 groups of data
coefficients in the matrix were obtained, then M+N equations
have been acquired, which were also shown in part 6 of this
can be built. So, the leakage currents on the segments and the
paper.
surface charges of the boundary elements can be obtained, from
which the electric field and potential of the composite
5 NUMERICAL CALCULATION METHOD OF insulators can be calculated.
THE ELECTRIC FIELD
5.2 THE MODEL CONSTRUCTION OF THE
5.1 THE DESCRIPTION OF THE CALCULATION
NUMERICAL SIMULATION
THEORY
As the theory mentioned above, the simulation objects can be
Because of the complexity, the available method to calculate modeled into two kinds, insulator and conductors. The
the electric field around the insulators is numerical method. insulator include three different parts, the sheds, FRP rod and
There were some papers that calculated the electric field around electrode. All the conductors were modeled as cylinder. And
the transmission lines or insulators, but they rarely considered the final model which was used in the simulation was shown in
the transmission line, tower and insulators at the same time. Figure 7.
In our research work, different types of components, such as,
the composite insulators, the transmission lines and crossbeam
which can be modeled as metal lines, must be considered
simultaneously in the numerical simulation. Based on the
original research work [23], the combination of boundary
element method (BEM) and method of moments (MoM) was
adopted here to solve this problem.
For simulation, the surface of the insulator was dissected into
many boundary elements, and the conductors were dissected
into many segments.
First, for the composite insulators, equations were built
based on the indirect BEM by introducing charges on the
interface of the insulator to substitute the effect out of the Figure 7. The simulation model of the insulators.
interface. So, the key problem changed to find the quantity of
the sources on the elements, which must satisfy the boundary In boundary element setting, the dielectric constants of the
conditions and the equations inside the boundary. For the jth air, FRP rod and insulators were 1, 4, and 4.5, respectively. The
element, the following equation can be acquired [24], RMS value of high voltage was set to be 35 kV and ground wire
q j ε0 − εc was zero.
+ Enj = 0 (6) Table 1. The dissection of each component.
2ε 0 ε 0 + ε c
Number of Number of
where εc, ε0 are the dielectric constants of the insulators and air, Component
respectively, qj is the charge in the jth element. And Enj is the elements segments
electric field at the jth element, caused by the charges on other FRP rod 400
elements, the ground image and the leakage currents on the Shed 792
segments. Assume the number of the elements of the insulators
High potential connector 48
is M and that of the segments of the conductors is N. The matrix
equation can be acquired as, Low potential connector 16
High voltage conductor 4
⎡I ⎤
[A21 A22 ] ⎢ ⎥ = 0 (7) Grounded conductor 4
⎣q⎦ Grounded crossbeam 16
where A21 is a coefficient matrix of the segments, and A22 is the
Suspension conductor 16
coefficient matrix of the boundary elements, I is the vector of

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IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Vol. 15, No. 1; February 2008 307

Based on the rectangle fundamental element, the insulators 100

were dissected. And the conductors were segmented as shown Me a s u r e d
90
in Table 1. Calculated

(kV/m)
From the Table 1, the number of boundary elements M were 80
400+792+48+24=1256, and the number of conductors N were 70
40. Thus, the total variables were 1296. The numerical program

El e c t r i c f i e l d
was developed based on Matlab software. And the result 60
obtained based on this program were illustrated as following. 50

40

6 THE COMPARISON ANALYSIS OF THE 30

MEASUREMENT AND SIMULATION 20
RESULT 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Me a s u r e d a n d c a l c u l a t e d p o i n t
6.1 THE RESULTS OF AXIAL ELECTRIC FIELD
COMPONENT
As illustrated in the last two parts, the measurement and Figure 10. The axial electric field distributed along the insulators, r = 40 mm.
numerical simulation results have been obtained based on a 35
kV composite insulators. The measurement and calculation
results of the RMS value of the axial electric field were 100
illustrated from Figure 8 to Figure 13, when r = 20 mm, 30 mm, Me a s u r e d
90
40 mm, 50 mm, 60 mm and 70 mm, respectively. Calculated
(kV/m)
80
160
70
Meas ur ed
140
El e c t r i c f i e l d

Calculated 60
(kV/m)

120 50
40
100
El e c t r i c f i e l d

30
80 20

60 10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
40 Me a s u r e d a n d c a l c u l a t e d p o i n t

20
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Figure 11. The axial electric field distributed along the insulators, r = 50 mm.
Mea s ur ed and c al c ul at e d po i nt

Figure 8. The axial electric field distributed along the insulators, r = 20 mm.
100
120 90 Measured
me a s u r e d Calculated
110
(kV/m)

80
Calculated
(kV/m)

100 70
90 60
El e c t r i c f i e l d

80 50
El e c t r i c f i e l d

70 40
60 30
50 20
40 10
30 0
20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Me a s u r e d a n d c u l c a l t e d p o i n t
Me a s u r e d a n d c a l c u l a t e d p o i n t

Figure 9. The axial electric field distributed along the insulators, r = 30 mm. Figure 12. The axial electric field distributed along the insulators, r=60 mm.

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308 R. Zeng et al.: Measurement of Electric Field Distribution Along Composite Insulators by Integrated Optical Electric Field Sensor

100 The difference between the measurement and calculation

90
Me a s u r e d was caused by the model of the simulation. At the end of the
Calculated insulators, the real shape of high potential and low potential
(kV/m)

80 connector was more complex than the simulation model. And

70 the crossbeam and other conductors were irregular shape, but
they were modeled as cylinder in the simulation. These kinds of
El e c t r i c f i e l d

60
hypothesis result in the error of numerical simulation. That is to
50
say, in order to get more credible result of the distribution of the
40 electric field along the insulators, the measurement is essential.
30
20 6.2 THE RESULTS OF RADIAL ELECTRIC FIELD
10 COMPONENT
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
The measurement and calculation results of the RMS value
Me a s u r e d a n d c a l c u l a t e d p o i n t of the radial electric field were illustrated from Figure 14 to
Figure 13. The axial electric field distributed along the insulators, r=70 mm. Figure 17, when r = 20 mm, 30 mm, 40 mm and 50 mm,
respectively.
From all the figures, it can be found that the curves of the Compared with the axial curve, it can be found that the
measured and calculated were similar to each other, both were distribution of radial electric field component decrease
U shape. That is to say, compared with the middle part, each monotonously along the insulators from high potential end to
end of the insulators tolerates much higher electric field. low potential end, not as the U shape of axial one.
Especially, when r is 20 mm, the electric field of measured and
calculated value at position 1,2 (high potential)and 10 (low
potential) were 157.3 kV/m, 92.6 kV/m and 92.1 kV/m, 140
respectively, almost 2 to 5 times as that at position 8. That is to Meas ur ed
120 Calculated
say, the optimum design of the grading ring is very important
(kV/m)

for EHV of UHV insulators to avoid this kind of 100

un-equilibrium. And with the increase of r, the electric field
decrease sharply at the terminal of insulators than at the middle 80
El e c t r i c f i e l d

part do. The electric field is almost in inverse proportion to r at

60
the high potential end of the insulators.
By comparing the measurement and calculation result, the 40
difference between them was listed in Table 2. It can be found
that the difference was U shape too. The difference at the end 20
of the insulators was much bigger than in the middle. For
0
instance, the difference was less than 20% from position 3 to 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
7, but at position 1, 8, 9, and 10, the difference was much
Mea s ur ed an d c al c ul a t ed po i nt
higher.
Figure 14. The radial electric field distributed along the insulators, r = 20 mm.

Table 2. The difference between the measurement and calculation of the axial
electric field.
100
90 Meas ur ed
Point Distance to the axis, r（mm） Calculated
80
(kV/m)

number 20 30 40 50 60 70 70
1 0.4% 8.5% 12.2% 23.0% 21.2% 22.0% 60
El e c t r i c f i e l d

2 17.8% 12.8% 4.2% 3.3% 18.5% 23.1% 50

3 1.9% 7.6% 13.9% 14.4% 4.7% 0.2% 40
4 13.5% 6.5% 0.7% 10.8% 19.1% 13.8% 30
5 6.8% 0.0% 7.5% 1.9% 2.2% 2.4% 20
6 17.1% 9.6% 6.6% 1.5% 5.9% 6.3% 10
7 15.8% 10.5% 10.3% 12.1% 18.0% 16.8% 0
8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
28.5% 24.9% 19.9% 18.1% 16.6% 16.2%
9 Meas ur ed and c al c ul at ed poi nt
29.3% 26.0% 26.9% 28.1% 29.8% 33.9%
10 48.1% 42.0% 35.8% 37.4% 36.0% 33.6% Figure 15. The radial electric field distributed along the insulators, r=30 mm.

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IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Vol. 15, No. 1; February 2008 309
Table 3. The difference between the measurement and calculation of the radial
electric field.
100
90 Me as u r ed Point Distance to the axis, r（mm）
80 Calculated 20 30 40 50
number
(kV/m)

70 1 1.0% 0.0% 9.5% 1.9%

60 2 41.6% 19.7% 18.9% 0.5%
El e c t r i c f i e l d

50 3 53.7% 15.2% 17.2% 1.3%

40
4 68.8% 14.4% 11.9% 8.8%
30
5 63.7% 17.3% 11.8% 12.4%
20
6 68.5% 8.4% 23.3% 17.6%
10
7 65.1% 13.2% 25.5% 21.8%
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 8 70.5% 25.6% 40.7% 5.3%
Mea s u r e d a n d c a l c u l a t ed p oi n t 9 48.3% 76.4% 92.7% 76.4%

Figure 16. The radial electric field distributed along the insulators, r =
40 mm. 7 CONCLUSIONS
A novel measurement system based on the integrated
electro-optic sensor for the measurement of electric field of the
80
insulators has been developed and presented. This kind of
Me as ur ed
70 sensor was high voltage insulated, able to measure intensive
Calculated
(kV/m)

60 electric field, small size, and passive design. After fabrication,

by carefully calibration and the field measurement of real
50
composite insulators, it has been verified that this system is
El e c t r i c f i e l d

40 very suitable for the electric field measurement and diagnosis

30
of insulators. By combining the BEM and CSM numerical
method, the numerical simulation of complex structures which
20 include insulators and connected conductors is possible. By
10 comparing the measurement and calculation results, it can be
concluded that the measurement is essential to get credible
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 result, although the simulation is a very important method too.
Me as u r e d an d c al c ul at ed po i n t
A new sensor that can measure more intensive electric field to 2
MV/m is in developing by the authors, which will be a
Figure 17. The radial electric field distributed along the insulators, r = powerful tool for the research work of insulation.
50 mm.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
It can be found from these curves that the amplitude
changed sharply at high potential end, and changed slowly at Foundation of China under Grant 50407002 and Fund of the
low potential end. For example, the amplitude at position 1 National Priority Basic Research of China (2004CB217906).
(the first shed of high potential) was the biggest, reached
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