Parametrical Finite Element Method In Numerical Simulation Of Overhead Transmission Lines

Overhead transmission lines usually suffer different loads, such as wind, ice and earthquake, in operation, which may induce windage flashover of insulator string, breakage of conductors, galloping of iced conductors and collapse of towers, and all these accidents may lead to safety problems of transmission lines, and in turn, bring great damage to the national economic development. Therefore, it is urgent to analyze the mechanical responses of the transmission lines under different loads deeply. The FEM is an important method and powerful weapon to solve those problems.During finite element analyses, it usually spends 40 to 45 percent of total time to create model and make pre-processing, 50 to 55 percent to make post-processing, and only 5 percent to carry out the computation. Making use of the parametrical FEM in the engineering design of overhead transmission lines to numerically analyze the related mechanics problems will greatly speed up the process of the finite element analyses.In this paper, the customization of ABAQUS software, object-oriented Python language and the principle and steps of using Python language to carry out parametrical FEM based on ABAQUS software are firstly introduced. The components in overhead transmission lines and their mechanical models are discussed, and the parametrical modeling method of those components is then presented, including the construction of geometry model, the disposal of loads in overhead transmission line and the connections among those components, the selection of elements and meshing of the components. Based on the theory and method of parametric finite element, software is developed on the ABAQUS/CAE platform. The application of the software in the creation of finite element model and the analyses are introduced in details. Finite element models of windage of a representative transmission line and mode analysis of a tower and conductor system are established respectively by means of the developed software, by which the validity and practicability of the software are demonstrated.Practical application of the developed software indicates that the parametric finite element method is a powerful tool in the numerical simulation of transmission lines, which shows a prospective foreground in the engineering design of overhead transmission lines.