Comparison of Two UV Imaging Parameterss Ln

the Insulator Fault Diagnosis

Lv Fang-cheng,Dai Ri-jun,Li Hai-de, Jin Hu

Hebei Provincial Key Laboratory of Power Transmission Equipment Security Defense, North China Electric Power
University, Baoding 071003, China
Sande13142-@163.com


Abstract- At present, the main parameter is the ultraviolet
flare area and flare diameter, in order to has a contrast in
the insulator for fault diagnosis, in this paper, through the
water spray classification method to choice normal, good, a
mark, degradation and serious aging 5 kinds of insulation of
the same kind of insulator. The platform structures is in the
laboratory, the pressurized are 8 kV, 10 kV and 15 kV,
through the South Africa CoroCAM504 UV camera to take
enough UV insulator pictures under discharge conditions,
using digital image processing algorithm extracting the two
parameters ,through MATLAB digital simulation, paper
obtain the change of two parameters with insulating of state
trend. The results show that: 1) when the insulator insulation
is in good condition, flare area and flare diameter almost
negligible, correspondence is better, conversely, in these two
parameters are small, it's always good insulator insulation. 2)
when the insulator insulation comes problems, both had a
tendency to rise, but flare area have a turning point 4, and
flare diameter not, this shows that when insulation
degradation to certain degree, flare area is not too big, and
differentiate the spot diameter can be distinguished. Ultimately
it provides a quantitative assessment of the basis and certain
guidance for insulator in the running status .
Key words- insulators; Ultraviolet imaging; light spot; Flare
diameter; Mathematical morphology; Condition assessment

I. INTRODUCTION
High voltage insulators bear high voltage level, during
the long-term operation process, for various reasons that the
performance of insulations will decrease, coincided with a
surface discharge. According to its characteristics of
discharge we can monitor its operation condition online,
detect the fault insulators and reduce the harm. UV imaging
is a new method to detect insulation condition of high-
voltage electrical insulators, the basic principle is that assess
the insulate situation of insulators by detecting the UV light
signals emitted from the discharge point of the insulators
surface. Compared with the traditional detection methods,
this method has characteristics of long detection distance,
non-contact, high sensitivity and positioning the discharge
point precisely
[1-3]
. Currently, UV imaging method applied
in the power system mainly in the following aspects: (1)
Filthy discharge detection of high voltage electrical
equipment; (2) Insulator discharge detection; (3)External
injury detection of wire; (4)Maintenance of high-voltage
substation and line; (5) Find other sources of radio
interference
[4]
. However, in the current UV imaging method
quantitative and characterize the intensity of discharge is
generally used the parameter of so-called flare number.
But, according to the relevant information provided by
equipment manufacturers we can see that the parameter is
not really the number of flare, just the number of spots
within a period of time in the UV image area through the
equipment used within a certain signal processing
algorithms. Flare number of parameters can be read directly
from the instrument screen, convenient and quickly. But
through extensive research and field pre-testing the authors
found that the use of the actual number of ultraviolet flare to
characterize the discharge exist inadequate aspects: (1) flare
number and ultraviolet imagers gain, it appears more
complex non-linear relationship in distance, and it is
difficult to get a better curve and not easy to quantify the
discharge; (2) flare number need to be read from the screen
manually, so it is not easy to extract and calculate
automatically, and so it is not easy to study the dynamic
process of the discharge; (3) Observing distance have a
great impact on the number of flare, and the distance is
difficult to determine from the scene, under different
distance testing results are not comparable.
During the observing, the scale of spot size (the area of
discharge and light-emitting region, this article will referred
as spot )in the UV image change dynamic with the
strength of the discharge, this article will be defined as
spot area , compared with the flare number, the spot area
has the following characteristics: (1) The spot area extracted
by the ultraviolet image in imaging method is actually the
UV-channel images, that glow discharge and ionization
region, the spot size and intensity of the discharge has a
more clear physical meaning; (2) The relationship between
the variation of spot size and gain of distance is better, and
we can get a clear explanation from works of imaging and
instrumentation, and this facilitate the engineering
applications; (3) The use of image processing software can
2011 Second International Conference on Intelligent System Design and Engineering Application
978-0-7695-4608-7/11 $26.00 2011 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ISdea.2011.173
1400
2012 International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Engineering Application
978-0-7695-4608-7/12 $26.00 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ISdea.2012.550
1400
automatically calculate large number and continuous spot in
UV area of video, and the efficiency in parameter extraction
is good. In the digital image, the discharge spot area
composed by a lot of pixels. In the binary image each pixel
in the region of 1, while the black background region by
the 0. Therefore, the number of pixels of 1"in statistical
image matrix can be obtained by the number of spot area,
this article will be defined as spot area. The maximum
distance of two points in the edge of the spot is defined as
spot diameter also stated by pixel value. At present, the
more commonly used is these two parameters, but in the
field, in order to get better relationship corresponding with
the insulator failure, it is necessary to compare the
performance of these two parameters
[4-5]
.
II. BUID TEST PLATFORM
A. Test Selection
The main purpose of this paper is to compare the two
UV-fault diagnosis of parameters in the performance of
insulators. So choose a set of samples as follows: composite
insulator, its model is FXBW4-10/70, a total of 5, the
insulating state as follows: by the method of water
classification in the field select insulators in five kinds of
the insulating state: normal,well,micro marks,deterioration
and a serious of aging. Wash them before the test, then air
dry for 24 hours, stand-by.
B. Test Process
Study will take place to ensure a stable power supply
and adjust spot size in the larger range as much as possible,
so this paper uses ultraviolet imager model for South Africa
CoroCAM504, the use of video to record the test system
connection designed to test this section shown in Figure 1.

Fig.1 Experiment system connection diagram

The high voltage of high-frequency in test provided by
the HY-AC20-type 100kV of high voltage console,
composite insulators model is FXBW4-10/70. The front is
controlled by the program, keeping gain the data that
removed from a circular buffer, then send it into the buffer
of application to compute, archive, and display graphics. As
long as the speed of data processing, archiving is larger than
the speed of data acquisition or equal to it, continuous data
collection will be sustainable.
III. THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN SPOT AREA AND
THE INSULATOR STATE
A. The Main Algorithm To Calculate Flare Area
Use computer technology to process image, translate
the images of JPEG format into BMP format, thats to say
transform the color images into grayscale pictures, and
further into the gray-scale map of the binary pattern. So
these pictures expressed by 0 and 1 , it is not only can
reduce the computer memory, the more important is the
information of picture only have a relationship with the
position in the image of 0 and 1, without considering
other factors , this is a great convenience to the scene. After
binarization, segmented discharge spot area by image
segmentation techniques and digital image processing and
mathematical morphology, further statistic the
characteristics of spot. Binary image stored in a matrix
made up of 0 and 1 , on which basis for mathematical
operations, mathematical operation, and finally achieve the
discharge of quantification spot information, including flare
area and flare diameter. The two parameters provide an
important reference for the technical personnel.
The mainly information Ultraviolet Imager get is
ultraviolet image. In order to get the information of online
operation insulator, need image processing, mainly using
image segmentation and morphologic image processing.
Mathematical morphology is a kind of nonlinear analysis
methods, which made signal waveform characteristics
completely in the time domain. Image segmentation is a
typical example of its application, that is, to divide the
image into several meaningful area, extracted the image you
need to apply the feature, such as the pixel gray value,
contour and texture of the object, and so on. Image
segmentation is the key steps of image processing for the
image analysis
[6]
. The basic approach: first choose a gray
threshold in the image gray value range, and apply the
threshold to all image pixels. Because, usually, the whole
picture with a threshold to handle cannot get good
segmentation results. So when using dynamic threshold
segmentation method for software design, by adjusting the
threshold value, trial and error, until transfer to the
satisfaction of the outcome. The basic idea can be
represented by the following function:
1
1 2
2
0,
( ) 255,
0,
x T
f x T x T
x T
s

= < <

>

(1)
Among them,
1
T and
2
T for the threshold.
Another image processing methods is mathematical
morphology, including image erosion, expansion, image on
or image closed operations. Corrosion of the operator is
1401 1401
defined as .For a given image B and structure element
S, all the B has a related structure elements S, current
position pixel is called S that is the collection of the B
corrosion.
Mathematical expression of the operation is:
{( , ) }
xy
E B S x y S B = = _ (2)
Expansion can be expressed as:
( , )
{( , ) [( ) ]}
x y
D B S x y S B = = = C (3)
Where, for the expansion operator.
Image sharpening is to keep edge blur and contour
lines of the image becomes clearly, to clarify the details
better. From a mathematical point of view, image fuzzy is
the essence of the image under the influence of average or
sharing operations, therefore its inverse operation (such as
differential operations) can make the image clearer. While
edge that detected by morphological edge detection
methods is more smoother, retains more edge detail
[7-8]
.
This article uses second-order differential operator
Laplacian image enhancement. Continuous binary
function
( ) , f x y , the Laplace operations defined as:
2 2
2
2 2
f f
f
x y
c c
V = +
c c

For digital image, Laplace operator can be simplified as:
( ) ( ) ( ) , , ,
k l
r k s l
g i j f i r j s H r s
= =
=
__
(4)
where , 0,1, 2, , 1 i j N = .
( ) 1, 1, , k l H r s = = as follows:

1
0 1 0
1 4 1
0 1 0
H
| |
|
=
|
|

\ .
(5)
B. Relationship of Spot Size And Insulation Condition
Test images are as follows:

Fig.2 Discharge experiment figure

Under the condition of the pressurized respectively for 8
kV, 10 kV and 15 kV, the measurement of flare area with
the changes of the insulation states are shown below:


Fig.3 The change of flare area with insulation state
IV. SPOT DIAMETER AND INSULATORS INSULATING STATE
MAP
In this article, spot diameter and spot area for the same
algorithm, in the same case, are the following parameters:

Tab.1 The change of flare diameter with insulation state situation

Insulator
state
normal good Micro-
mark
degradation Serious
aging
Flare area
8
3 11 122 266 385
Flare area
10
4 13 135 275 392
Flare area
15
6 17 150 283 402
By MATLAB simulation, can get the following rules:
1402 1402

Fig.4 Flare diameter with insulation change status curve
V. ANALYSIS
A. Spot size variation with the insulating state
(1) see from a single curve trend, before the "2" when the
insulation is in good insulator the spot size is almost
negligible, but curves rise rapidly between the "2" to "4" ,
and after the "4 "although a certain rise, but more gentle.
(2) Between each curve, before the "2" almost overlap,
after the "2", the curve of applied higher voltage slightly
higher than the curve of applied lower voltage.
B. Spot diameter variation with insulation status
(1) See from a single curve, before the "2" the rise is
very gentle, after the "2" rise rapidly, and there is no
turning point.
(2) Although the three curves show the distribution with
the applied voltage level, but separation is not obvious.
C. Comparative Analysis
By 4.1 and 4.2, we may see:
(1) When the insulation in good condition, spot area
and spot diameter is almost negligible, the correspondence
is better, on the contrary, when these two parameters are
small, shows a good insulator insulation.
(2)When insulator insulation have problems, both are
on the increase, but the spot area have a turning point "4",
but did not spot diameter, which shows that, when the
insulation deterioration to a certain extent, the spot size is
not much distinction between degrees, while the spot
diameter can be distinguished.
VI. CONCLUSION
Through the experiment, the article compared the
ultraviolet flare area and flare diameter with the changes of
the insulation states insulator, analyses their characteristics,
in general, made the following results:
(1) Design of test platform, South Africa CoroCAM504
Ultraviolet Imager, with 5 kinds of insulation condition of
an insulator by UV test under different voltage, received the
test pictures.
(2) Using mathematical morphology to process UV
image, and got different test conditions of ultraviolet flare
area and flare diameter.
(3) Obtain the changing relationship of the spot area and
spot diameter with the insulating state through MATLAB
simulation curve, and obtain each of their changes, and
finally, by comparing the two parameters change with the
insulating state, get the similarities and differences between
the two and ultimately achieve important quantitative basis
to assess insulator state.
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