The indigenous and foreign scholars have conducted considerable research on the electrical characteristics of ice‐covered insulators, but there is a lack of research on the growth process of ice accretion on insulators. On the basis of the heat and mass balance during icing, a complete wet‐growth icing model, including the ice accretion on the insulator surface and the growth of icicles is established. In this model, the loss of water film on the insulator surface and the water supply for icicles are taken into account, and rebuild the icicle growing equations according to the water mass balance. The effect of flow‐field change due to the growth of icicles is considered and analysed. The simulation results indicate that the growth of icicles and ice thickness are affected by climate parameters and the flow‐field change. Low temperature and high wind speed can increase the growing rate of icicles and the ice thickness and decrease the time of icicle bridging. The change of flow field leads to changes in water mass balance and slows the progress of icing on the insulator surface. Through a series of icing tests on insulator FXBW‐110/100, it is found that the experimental results are in good agreement with those obtained by the numerical simulation method.

Ice-shedding jumps in transmission lines often lead to accidents such as flashover and tower collapse. Existing mitigation methods typically require the application of additional external equipment on conductors. In this study, the inhibitory effect of load current cycling transferred ice-melting technology (LCCT) on bundled conductors is investigated to eliminate the need for supplementary devices. The underlying principles are analyzed, a numerical simulation model is developed, and field experiments are conducted under natural environmental conditions. The results demonstrate that the inhibitory effect varies significantly with changes in the ice thickness and ice-melting conditions. For ice thicknesses ranging from 5 mm to 25 mm under identical melting conditions, the inhibitory effect increases by 67.8%. The most effective inhibition (93.4% average) occurs at the 25-mm ice thickness. Among the ice-melting conditions, H4 has the greatest inhibitory effect (95.4%). Other conditions yield inhibitory effects ranging from 2.6% to 76.2%. Field experiments confirm that condition H4 achieves a 91.4% inhibitory effect on four-split transmission lines.

Icing can adversely influence electric power system security. Two main issues are caused by icing: the overload of transmission lines, and the reduction in the insulation ability of the insulators. Most previous research has focused on the flashover characteristics of ice-covered insulators, but research on the icing process of the insulator is seriously lacking. Considering the effect of icing shape, the outer airflow field of an insulator was calculated and the local collision efficiencies of water droplets (β₁) were investigated according to the Lagrange algorithm. The simulation showed that the values of β₁ on the insulator edge and rod are much higher than on the insulator surface, and both were significantly influenced by the wind speed and median volume diameter (MVD) of the water droplets. Based on thermal balance equations, a dynamic dry-growth icing model was established. Using the natural icing conditions of Xuefeng Mountain (China) as an example, validation experiments were conducted on a composite insulator and the climate parameters measured by multi-cylinders were used to model the icing shape and mass. The results indicate that high wind speed and low temperature increase icing rate; the icing was mainly concentrated on the windward side and the greatest horizontal thickness was generally on the insulator edge. The dry-growth model had an average error lower than 25% for icing thickness and an average error lower than 20% for icing mass, which were affected by icing roughness.

Icing threatens the safe and stable operation of transmission lines. Accurate prediction of the icing process of conductor can help the work of anti‐icing and disaster reduction of transmission lines. Generally, the icing of conductor is accompanied by the torsion process of conductor. Because of the interaction of conductor torsion and icing, there is a big difference of the icing shape and rate between different positions on a transmission line. In order to improve the accuracy of numerical calculation of conductor icing, a dynamic numerical calculation model of conductor icing torsion is established based on hydrodynamics and basic mechanics in this paper. Comprehensively, the model takes the effects of torsion angle and torsion icing shape on the icing process into consideration, including the effects on airflow filed and trajectories of water droplets in the air. Through the simulation, the change law of the torsion angle at different positions of the conductor, the influence characteristics of the conductor torsion on the icing process, and the differences of the icing torsion of conductor under different environmental parameters are analysed. The results show that, compared with the condition without torsion, the collision range of water droplets on the conductor is larger under the torsion condition, the average value of collision efficiency β ₁ is higher, and the icing rate is faster. The larger the wind velocity and the median volume diameter of water droplets in the air, the faster the conductor icing torsion development.

This paper calculates and analyzes the collision and freezing characteristics of water droplets on the cylindrical conductors with different diameters and deduces the variation law of icing weight change rate on different diameters rotating cylindrical conductors with wind speed, ambient temperature, liquid water content, and median volume diameter. Then, a prediction and value-seeking method of icing environment parameters based on rotating circular conductors is determined. The laboratory test results show that the measured values of ambient temperature T, wind speed U, liquid water content w and median volume diameter MVD are in good conformity with the reference values measured by other instruments, and the average errors of each parameter are 3.41%, 5.44%, 6.08% and 7.20%, respectively. The field natural experiment was carried out at Hunan Xuefengshan Energy Equipment Safety National Observation and Research Station. The obtained icing environmental parameters were substituted into the icing simulation calculation model of the LDQ-100 glass insulator. Compared with the field experiment results, the simulated ice shape and the field ice shape were in good agreement. The error between the numerical calculation results of the icing weight and the field icing weight of the experimental insulator was less than 6%.