Analysis of electric field distribution of cable insulation defects

Abstract

A defective single-core power cable model of city network was established based on Ansoft/Maxwell in this paper. Then we simulated the electric-field of the operation of the cable during the normal and other defective circumstances such as with the air gap or water gap in the insulating layer, or the steel nail ligation in the power cable. By simulation, it is found that the existence of defects will cause the distortion of the surrounding electric field, and the distorted electric field will produce high frequency pulse current in the copper shielding layer, which provides a feasibility proof for diagnosing the cable insulation defects by measuring the leakage current.