Analytical and Numerical Techniques for Simulatinga 3D Rainwater Droplet in a Strong Electric Field

Abstract

Outdoor high-voltage equipment is exposed to moisture, rain and pollution. Water droplets on insulators influence negatively the material-aging process. A numerical procedure is presented which simulates the droplet behavior in a strong electric field. It consists of an iteration over an electric and a mechanical sub-problem to solve a coupled system of boundary value problems on the free domain of the droplet. Finally we give the resulting droplet shapes for 2D and 3D models, and we mention the behavior of a droplet in an inhomogeneous electric field.