Glasgow Caledonian University

SEBE PhD Research Project Portfolio

Project Reference Number / SEBE_DSS_SF_1
School/Institute/Research Group / School of Engineering and Built Environment, Diagnostic Systems and Sensors
Research Discipline / High voltage, Outdoor insulation, Electric power transmission, Partial discharge, contamination flashover
Project Title / Partial discharge measurement of outdoor insulators under winter fog conditions
Research Project Summary / One of the main features of Scotland’s climate is fog. Fog (and particularly winter fog) is a dangerous weather condition that could cause flashover of insulators in overhead transmission lines, substations and railway catenary network. Winter fog is categorized meteorologically as heavy fog, high humidity and an ambient temperature near 0°C. When the polluted layer of insulator surface becomes wet, the surface conductivity increases. This will cause increasing leakage current, initiation of partial discharge and under certain conditions, can lead to insulator flashover and possibly power outage.Power blackout causes high socio-economic costs and is not acceptable in the modern life.
A Fog Chamber Facility is being conceptualized and built to simulate the fog and rain under various environmental conditions (suitable for spraying at -2°C or above). The chamber has been designed such that all governing parameters can be controlled.
The aim of this project is to study Partial discharge (PD) activities which are the indication of probable initiation of flashover on insulators. The appropriate measurement of this phenomenon (de-noising the measurements) would be a useful tool for asset management of high voltage equipment and has not received much attention in flashover studies.Furthert novelty will relate to the high level analysis of radiated PD signals detected at different frequency ranges (VHF, UHF, HF), which could be useful to detect contaminated insulation systems.
The project benefits from supervisors’ background on the subject. Dr. Farokhi has conducted research for more than 8 years on the insulators under polluted and freezing conditions. Dr. Juan Manuel MartínezTarifa (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) and Prof. Brian Stewart are expertsinpartial discharge measurement.
The output from this work is to determine the severity of this phenomenon under different climate conditions and subsequently finding a suitable mitigation method. This will help to increase the reliability of power transmission and railway networks and is of significant interest for both power network and rail industries.
Supervisory Team /
  • Dr. Shahab Farokhi (GCU, EBE)
  • Dr. Juan Manuel Martínez Tarifa (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid )

  • Prof. Brian G. Stewart (GCU, EBE) (12 successful PhD Supervison)

Staff Contact / Dr. Shahab Farokhi,