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X. Yang et al.: Potential Distribution Computation and Structure Optimization for Composite Cross-arms

Potential Distribution Computation and Structure

Optimization for Composite Cross-arms
in 750 kV AC Transmission Line
Xi Yang, Naiyi Li, Zongren Peng, Jintao Liao and Qingyu Wang
State Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Power Equipment
Xian Jiaotong University
Xian, Shaanxi, 710049, P.R.China

ABSTRACT
As composite cross-arm will be used in domestic 750 kV AC transmission line for the
first time, careful and meticulous preparatory work is highly needed. Using a threedimension (3-D) finite-element method (FEM) software, this paper presents
computation results of the potential and electric field distribution for composite crossarms in the process of structure optimization. Several optimization programs for
composite cross-arm have been studied and the final design is made to omit the
suspension insulator string, to increase the length of post insulators and to configure
suitable grading and shielding rings based on preliminary design. A set of grading and
shielding rings configuration program has been proposed. The comparison between
optimized composite cross-arms and 750 kV line composite insulators indicates that
composite cross-arms have better potential distribution. The electric tests demonstrate
that optimized composite cross-arms have good electrical performance and can meet
operation requirements.
Index Terms - Composite cross-arms, potential distribution, structure optimization,
electric field, 750 kV AC, finite element method (FEM), grading and shielding rings.

1 INTRODUCTION
WITH the purpose of increasing power transferred and
improvement of the efficiency of power delivery, the system
voltage rating has been increasing steadily [1]. In northwest of
China, great efforts have been made in the construction of 750
kV main grid to support the economic development.
Due to its excellent anti-pollution performance, light weight
and ease of installation [2], composite materials have been
widely used in various transmission lines of different voltage
levels [3-5]. Among of them, composite cross-arm is a smart
application. Usually, insulator strings are used to connect
tower and wires; to provide electrical insulation and
mechanical support. If the steel cross-arms of the tower is
replaced with composite materials, the new type composite
cross-arms can also take the role of insulators. Thus the length
of insulator string will be shorten significantly or may even be
canceled. Compared with all-steel towers, this new tower with
composite cross-arms has advantage of saving line corridors,
reducing tower weight, easy installation and transportation.
Composite cross-arms and towers have already been used in
Europe and America. Several scholars have done research on
Manuscript received on 28 May 2013, in final form 28 February 2014,
accepted 1 March 2014.

them. Denis Dumora et al test the long-term cantilever

strength of composite line-post insulators and develop the
concept of the damage limit [6]. Anthony C. Baker describes
different types of braced insulator assemblies and provides the
guidelines for the proper application of them [7-8]. The
electrical and mechanical behaviors of a 400 kV composite
cross-arm have been studied by Peesapati et al [9-10].
However, the applications and researches above mainly focus
on the mechanical behavior rather than electrical performance.
Furthermore, the voltage level of the research objects
concentrated is always below 400 kV. Research on extra high
voltage (EHV) level in 750 kV is very limited. This is due to
the fact that, the composite cross-arms used in 750 kV
transmission lines have more complex structures, more
uneven potential and electric field distribution.
There is no adequate dependent guideline for the design and
placement of grading rings for composite cross-arms now. The
role of grading ring is to uniform the potential distribution of
composite cross-arm, decrease the electric field strength on the
surface of sheath and prevent the corona discharge on the surface
of fittings. For composite insulators, the electric field magnitude
at 0.5 mm above the surface of the sheath should be less than 450
V/mm (rms) and a surface electric field 2100 V/mm is often used
as a reference value for design purposes [11]. This paper adopts
the critical electric field values based on the reference above.

DOI 10.1109/TDEI.2014.004130

IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation

Vol. 21, No. 4; August 2014

With the advancement of computing power today,

numerical techniques, especially finite-element method (FEM),
have become practical and indispensable tools for field
computation and electrical design [12-14]. Determining the
reasonable arrangement through simulation and verifying it by
experimental tests has been proved to be an effective and
reasonable method [15].
Using the FEM software ANSYS, three-dimensional (3-D)
FEM models of 750 kV composite cross-arms based on actual
sizes is presented in this paper. The aim of the study is to
define a reasonable structure for 750 kV composite cross-arms
through the computation of potential and electric field
distribution and then apply to the real project based on the
findings herein.

1661

composite cross-arm, with A-shaped structure, serves as the

compression members. It is mainly constituted by two
horizontally post insulators (type A), where each post
insulator is divided into two sections by intermediate flange.
Another post insulator (type B) is used to connect the two
intermediate flanges. The upper part of the composite crossarm serves as the tension members. It is constituted by two
types of tension insulators (type A and B), which are used to
connect the end fittings, intermediate flanges between the
tower, respectively. A suspension insulator string is installed
under the end fittings to save line corridors and to increase the
insulation distance. The conductor used here is six bundle, the
subconductor diameter is 27.6 mm and the bundle diameter is
400 mm. The conductors are modeled as smooth conductors.

2 COMPOSITE CROSS-ARMS MODELING

Figure 1 shows a 3-D model of a straight tower with
composite cross-arms in 750 kV transmission line. The
height of tower is 62 m. In the initial design, the composite
cross-arms with tapered structure are connected to the tower
at upper and lower layers. The upper layer, which contains
one cross-arm with a length of 9.8 m, is 51.5 m high. The
lower layer contains two exactly same cross-arms: the length
of each cross-arm is 11.8 m, with the height of 39 m. As
shown in Figure 1, the three phases are named A, B, C,
respectively.
Figure 2 depicts the detailed model of composite cross-arm,
which comprises of post insulators, tension insulators,
intermediate flanges and fittings. The lower part of the

Figure 1. 3-D model of composite cross-arms in 750 kV transmission line.

Table 1. Dimension and material parameters for each component of composite cross-arm in three phases.
Length (mm)
Compose

Dimension (mm)

Permittivity
Phase A

Polyurethane

Outer diameter: 300

2.1

Outer diameter: 320; Thickness: 10

5.2

Rubber sheath

Shed diameter: 470, 436

3.2

Polyurethane

Outer diameter: 140

2.1

Outer diameter: 160; Thickness: 10

5.2

Rubber sheath

Shed diameter: 296, 262

3.2

Core rod

Outer diameter: 34

5.0

Post insulator

Insulating

(Type A)

tube

Post insulator

Insulating

(Type B)

tube

Tension insulator
(Type A)
and Suspension
insulator
Tension insulator
(Type B)

Rubber sheath

Shed diameter: 202, 170, 138

3.2

Core rod

Outer diameter: 110

5.0

Rubber sheath

Shed diameter: 264, 208

3.2

Phase B, C

First section: 3079

First section: 3980

Second section: 3570

Second section: 4200

1187

1750

Tension insulator: 7444

Tension insulator: 9254

Suspension insulator:

Suspension insulator:

1700

1700

4801

5770

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X. Yang et al.: Potential Distribution Computation and Structure Optimization for Composite Cross-arms

Figure 2. Detailed model of composite cross-arm.

Figure 4. Finite elements for suspension insulator.

Post insulators have three layers: the inner layer is filled

with polyurethane, the middle layer is hollow insulating tube
and the external layer is silicone rubber sheath. Tension
insulators have the same structure as suspension insulator,
which include two layers, the inner one is core rod and the
external layer is silicone rubber sheath. The dimension and
material parameters of the insulators are illustrated in Table 1.

Two types of elements are used in meshing process:

tetrahedral and hexahedral. The hexahedral elements are
applied to the objects with regular shape such as conductors
and grading rings, with the purpose of saving the number of
elements. Other objects are meshed with tetrahedral elements.
Refined mesh is applied to the objects concerned. Different
types of finite elements are shown in Figure 4. The whole
model includes 9118754 elements and 12350675 nodes. The
numerical analysis is carried out on a workstation with Xeon
82.50 GHz processor; 32 GB RAM and 64 GB virtual
memory. The time required for completing a calculation is
about 53 minutes.

3 COMPUTATION METHOD
The FEM is a numerical computation method based on
variation principle, domain section and interpolation. In EM
field problems, complex unknown fields satisfy Maxwells
equations and can be dispersed as many smaller finite
elements. Then, the problems are solved as boundary value
problems described by the partial differential equations and
boundary conditions [16].

Considering the interaction between phases, the concerned

phase is applied with the peak value of the maximum
operation voltage while the other two phases are applied with
half of negative peak value. The concerned phase obtains the
most serious potential and electric field distribution. In this
model, the peak value is 800kV 3 2 653197V . The
electric potential is set to zero along the plane representing the
outer boundary of the domain and the surface of ground and
towers. The intermediate flange of post insulator (type A) can
be seen as floating potential determined by the whole potential
distribution.

4 PRELIMINARY COMPUTATION RESULTS

Figure 3. Calculation model of 750 kV composite cross-arms.

In the calculation model, the air boundary is set large

enough to reduce the calculation error and to ensure smooth
transition of mesh from inside out. As shown in Figure 3, the
air boundary is modeled as a cuboid with a dimension of 600
m 200 m 200 m.

Figure 5 shows the potential distribution of phase B. The

voltage of each insulator can be calculated after reading the
two floating potential value, as shown in Table 2, it can be
seen that the distributed voltage of suspension insulator is
283.8 kV, which accounts for about 61.4 % of total voltage,
while the two sections of post insulator (type A) undertake
about 21.4 %, 17.2 %, respectively.
The potential distribution curve taken through the center of
suspension insulator and post insulator (type A) is shown in
Figure 6. The first part of the curve drops significantly which
means the suspension insulator undertakes much high voltage
decrease in a short insulation distance compared to post insulator.

IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation

Vol. 21, No. 4; August 2014

1663

Table 3. Comparison of potential distribution for suspension insulators and

post insulators (type A) between three phases.
Suspension
insulators

Post insulators (type A)

First section

Second section

Phase A

260.9 kV

88.7 kV

112.3 kV

Phase B

283.8 kV

98.7 kV

79.4 kV

Phase C

246.8 kV

103.7 kV

111.4 kV

5 STRUCTURE OPTIMIZATION OF
COMPOSITE CROSS-ARM
Figure 5. Potential distribution of phase B in initial design.
Table 2. The distributed voltage of each insulator in phase B.

Post
insulators

Tension
insulators

Insulators

Distributed voltage [kV]

Suspension insulator

283.8

Type A

First section

98.7

Second section

79.4

Type B

Type A

178.1

Type B

79.4

Figure 6. Potential distribution curve that taken through the center of

suspension insulator and post insulator (post A) in phase B.

Similar results can be obtained in other two phases when

applying the initial calculation. The distributed voltage of
suspension and post insulator (type A) in three phases is
compared and illustrated in Table 3. The suspension insulator
undertakes about 53.4-61.4 % of total voltage. However, the
structure height of the suspension insulator is only 1700 mm.
Considering the installation of grading rings at the line end
and the low voltage end, the insulation distance between them
is even shorter. The probability for the occurrence of
flashover discharge is high and the initial design of composite
cross-arm needs to be optimized.

Three measures for structure optimization are proposed: 1)

increase the length of suspension insulator to expand the
insulation distance of suspension insulator, 2) change the
suspension string from single unit to double units so that the
capacitance of suspension string can be increased, 3) omit the
suspension string to avoid its high distributed voltage. The
structure optimization of composite cross-arm is aimed at
phase B.
5.1 INCREASING THE LENGTH OF SUSPENSION
INSULATOR
The first step is to increase the length of suspension
insulator (H) from 1700 mm to 4700 mm at the intervals of
1000 mm and to remain the cross-arm unchanged.

Figure 7. Potential distribution curves that taken through the center of

suspension insulator and post insulator (post A) in phase B when the
structure height of suspension insulator is variable.
Table 4. Comparison of distributed voltage percentage for suspension
insulator and post insulator (type A) in phase B between different structure
height of suspension insulator.
Structure
height
(mm)

Suspension
insulators

1700

Post insulators (type A)

First section

Second section

61.4 %

21.4 %

17.2 %

2700

72.7 %

13.6 %

13.7 %

3700

79.1 %

11.0 %

9.9 %

4700

85.7 %

8.0 %

6.3 %

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X. Yang et al.: Potential Distribution Computation and Structure Optimization for Composite Cross-arms

As shown in Figure 7 and Table 4, the potential distribution

near the line end has not been improved. The distributed
voltage of suspension insulator steadily increases from 61.4 %
to 85.7 % when expanding the structure height of suspension
insulator. The suspension insulator undertakes most of the
total voltage and the electrical function of composite crossarm has not been expressed well. So it is not feasible to
uniform the potential distribution of composite cross-arm via
increasing the structure height of suspension insulator.

5.3 OMITTING THE SUSPENSION STRING

The third step is to omit the suspension string and to
increase the length of post insulator (type A). As shown in
Figure 10, it contains two programs: with and without
intermediate flange. Table 5 shows the insulation distance of
post insulators (type A) in these two programs.

5.2 CHANGING THE SUSPENSION STRING FROM

SINGLE UNIT TO DOUBLE UNITS
The second step is to change the suspension string from
single unit to double units; the distance between the two units
is 550 mm. The calculation results are shown in Figure 8 - 9.

Figure 10. 3-D model of composite cross-arm after omitting suspension

insulator string: with and without intermediate flange.
Table 5. Insulation distance of post insulators (type A) after omitting
suspension string: with and without intermediate flange.
Phase A
With
intermediate
flange
Without
intermediate
flange

Phase B, C

1st section

3534 mm

1st section

4693 mm

2nd section

4120 mm

2nd section

4961 mm

Total

7654 mm

Total

9654 mm

Total

7354 mm

Total

9354 mm

Figure 8. Potential distribution of phase B after changing the suspension

string from single unit to double units.

Figure 9. Comparison of potential distribution curves that taken thorough

the center of suspension insulator and post insulator (type A) between the
situations: single unit and double units of suspension string.

It can be observed that the voltage undertaken by suspension

insulator slightly drops from 61.4 % to 58.4 %. The suspension
insulator still undertakes much high voltage. The contrast of
curves indicates that the potential distribution of cross-arm
almost remains unchanged. There is still a great probability of
flashover discharge. Hence it is also not feasible to uniform the
potential distribution of composite cross-arm through changing
the suspension string from single unit to double units.

Figure 11. Potential distribution of phase B after omitting suspension

insulator and increasing the length of post insulator (type A) that in the
program: with intermediate flange.

From Figure 11, we can conclude that in the program with

intermediate flange, the first section of post insulator (type A)
undertakes about 71.4 % of total voltage. Compared to initial
structure, the insulation distance between first section and the
line end has increased significantly; from 1700 mm to 4693
mm. The comparison of curves illustrated in Figure 12
indicates that intermediate flange has little effect on the whole
potential distribution of cross-arm.

IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation

Vol. 21, No. 4; August 2014

1665

However, in the program without intermediate flange, post

insulators (type A) require a larger dimension to meet the
requirements for mechanical strength. It causes great difficulty
in production, manufacture and insulation.
5.4 INSTALLATION OF GRADING AND SHIELDING
RINGS
The installation of grading and shielding rings needs to
ensure the maximum electric field strength on the surface of
the end fittings and silicone rubber sheath below the critical
values. Besides, the grading and shielding rings themselves do
not produce corona and are easy to install.
Figure 12. Comparison of potential distribution curves that taken thorough
the center of post insulator (type A) between the situations with and without
intermediate flange.

(a)
(b)
Figure 13. Electric field distribution around the insulators in phase B (a)
type A of tension insulators, (b) post insulators.

Figure 15. Schematic diagram for the installation of grading & shielding
rings.
Table 6. Install positions of grading rings for post insulators (type A) and
tension insulators (type A) in three phases.
Post insulator (type A)
First section

Figure 14. Electric field distribution along the surface of post insulator (type
A) and tension insulator (type A).

Figures 13 and 14 illustrate the electric field distribution on

the surface of composite cross-arm in the program with
intermediate flange. Similar results can be derived from the
other program. The place near the end of the silicone rubber
sheath suffers much higher electric field strength than the
middle. In particular, the maximum electric field strength in
the line end exceeds 2000 V/mm; the sheath is likely to be
damaged due to electrical ablation during long time running.
For the absence of shielding, the electric field strength on the
surface of end fittings is 3012 V/mm. There is a great
opportunity for the occurring of corona discharge.

Phase A

Phase B
Phase C

Second section
H

Tension insulator
(type A)

H represents high voltage end, L represents low voltage end

After a number of calculations and optimizations, the final

installation of grading and shielding rings is presented herein.
A pair of racetrack shielding rings with D = 1000 mm, d =
100 mm and L = 700 mm is installed outside the end fittings
of composite cross-arm to improve the potential distribution
of composite cross-arm and shield the electric field of the end
fittings. Two types of grading rings are used for tension
insulators (type A) and post insulators (type A), respectively.
They are installed near the connection position of flange and

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X. Yang et al.: Potential Distribution Computation and Structure Optimization for Composite Cross-arms

sheath to reduce the electric field strength of silicone rubber

sheath. The grading ring with D = 210 mm and d = 50 mm is
used for tension insulators (type A). Another grading ring that
with D = 500 mm and d = 80 mm is used for post insulators
(type A); it is designed into open style for ease of installation.
The install positions for grading and shielding rings are shown
in Figure 15 and Table 6.

6 VERIFICATION OF STRUCTURE
OPTIMIZATION FOR COMPOSITE CROSSARMS
6.1 CONTRAST OF POTENTIAL DISTRIBUTION
Figure 17 shows the 3-D model of a suspension tower in
750 kV transmission line, the middle phase of tower is V-type
insulators while the side phases is I-type. The structure height
of insulators is 6731 mm. The calculation results are shown in
Figure 18 and Table 8.

Figure 16. Comparison of potential distribution curves that taken thorough

the center of post insulator (type A) between the situations with and without
grading & shielding rings in phase B.

Figure 16 shows the potential distribution curves of post

insulator in phase B with and without grading and shielding
rings. It can be observed that after installing the shielding and
grading rings, the distributed voltage of the first section of
post insulator (type A) decreases from 78.4 % to 75.5 % and
the potential distribution near the line end is improved
evidently. As shown in Table 7, the maximum electric field
strength on critical positions significantly reduces and can
meet the electric field critical value after the installation of
grading and shielding rings.

Figure 17. 3-D model of line tower with V-string and I-string insulator in
750 kV transmission line.

Table 7. Comparison of electric field strength on critical positions between

the situations with and without grading and shielding rings in three phases.
Phase A

Phase B

Phase C

WO

WO

WO

2832

391

2942

378

2662

372

663

246

414

318

567

215

Tension insulator
(Type A)

3232

290

3458

356

2967

214

End fittings

2688

1607

3012

1646

2632

1583

st

Post
insulators
(type A)

1
section
nd

2
section

WO represents without grading & shielding ring.

W represents with grading & shielding ring.

Through the calculation and analysis of different programs,

the structure of composite cross-arm is finally determined to
omit the suspension string, to increase the length of crossarms and to install reasonable shielding and grading rings on
the base of initial design.

Figure 18. Comparison of potential distribution curves that taken thorough

the center of insulators between post insulators (type A) of composite crossarm and V-string, I-string insulators in 750 kV transmission line.

As shown in Figure 18, the potential distribution curves of

post insulators are higher than I-string and V-string, indicating
that post insulators (type A) undertake lower voltage than Istring and V-string insulators. As shown in Table 8, the first
section of post insulators (type A) in phase A, B, C undertake
68.48, 75.47 and 70.08 %, respectively of total voltage
respectively, which are also lower than V-string and I-string.
Note that the above studies are performed under the same
insulation distance starting from the line end. The comparison
results demonstrate that the optimized composite cross-arms
have better potential distribution than ordinary line 750 kV
composite insulators.

IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation

Vol. 21, No. 4; August 2014

Table 8. Comparison of potential distribution between post insulators (type

A) of composite cross-arms and V-string, I-string insulators in 750 kV
transmission line.
Post insulators
V-string
I-string
(type A)
Insulation
First section
First 3534 mm
length
Phas
Voltage
316.3 kV
361.8 kV
313.5 kV
eA

Phas
eB

Phas
eC

Percentage

68.48 %

78.33 %

67.87 %

Insulation
length

First section

Voltage

348.6 kV

401.7 kV

354.1 kV

Percentage

75.47 %

86.97 %

76.67 %

Insulation
length

First section

Voltage

316.3 kV

401.7 kV

354.1 kV

Percentage

70.08 %

86.97 %

76.67 %

First 4693 mm

First 4693 mm

1667

Based on the results of switching impulse tests in Table 9, it

can be observed that the sparkover voltage of switching
impulse for composite cross-arms at the maximum application
attitude of 1500 m is higher than the required value of normal
750 kV transmission lines. The typical discharge path in tests
is from shielding rings, through intermediate flange to tower
as shown in Figure 19.
The artificial pollution tests are performed in the artificial
climate chamber of WHVRI. As shown in Figure 20, CEPRI
has performed the 50 % withstand voltage test to phase A with
salt density of 0.1 mg/cm2, gray density of 1.0 mg/cm2 and
attitude of 1500 m. The test results show that the withstand
voltage under weak hydrophobicity condition is between 593
kV and 643 kV. It is much higher than the actual operation
voltage of 461.9 kV. On the other hand, the leakage current is
between 260 - 360 mA.

6.2 ELECTRICAL TESTS

Note that China electric power research institute (CEPRI)
has made impulse voltage and artificial pollution tests for
composite cross-arms. The impulse voltage tests are
performed in the outdoor test field of Wuhan High Voltage
Research Institute (WHVRI). It is aimed at phase A and B.
After testing, the sparkover voltage of standard, 1000 s
switching impulse and standard lightning impulse at the
attitude of 0 m has been obtained. The voltage value can be
modified to the attitude of 1500 m according to IEC attitude
correction method [17].
Table 9. The results of switching impuse tests for 750 kV composite crossarms.
Voltage
[kV]

Standard

1000s

0m

1500 m

0m

1500 m

Phase A

1811

1676

1897

1672

Phase B

2015

1889

2126

2004

Required value
0m

1488

1500
m

Figure 20. Arrangement of artificial pollution tests for 750 kV composite

cross-arm of phase A.

The results of electrical tests demonstrate the well electrical

performance of composite cross-arms and can meet operation
requirements. Now the optimized composite cross-arms are
used in actual 750 kV transmission line shown in Figure 21.

1596

Figure 19. Arrangement of switching impulse test for phase A and typical
discharge path for 750 kV composite cross-arm.

Figure 21. Picture of 750 kV composite cross-arms in actual transmission

line.

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X. Yang et al.: Potential Distribution Computation and Structure Optimization for Composite Cross-arms

7 CONCLUSIONS
Potential computation and structure optimization play a
critical role in the design of 750 kV composite cross-arms.
The FEM is an effective method via taking into account most
of the influencing factors and can perform the analysis of
potential and electric field distribution of composite crossarms in a visually intuitive way.
Composite cross-arms in three phases share similar
potential distribution regularities. In the initial design, the
suspension insulators of three phases undertake 53.4, 56.5 and
61.4 % of total voltage, respectively. Due to the short
insulation distance, there is a great chance for the occurring of
flashover discharge.
As the structure optimization for suspension string are not
satisfactory, further studies are investigated. Expanding the
length of suspension insulator further increases the distributed
voltage of suspension insulator. However changing the
suspension insulator string from single unit to double units has
little impact on the whole potential distribution.
The first section of post insulator (type A) undertakes most of
total voltage after omitting the suspension string, nevertheless,
the insulation distance has increased from 1700 mm to 4693 mm
compared to initial structure. Intermediate flange has little effect
on the whole potential distribution. On the other hand, the
program without intermediate flange brings great difficulty in
production, manufacture and insulation.
Without grading and shielding rings, the end fittings and
silicone rubber sheath near the line end suffer extremely high
electric field, there is a great opportunity for corona discharge
and the sheath is likely to be damaged in long time running.
Hence, a proper set of grading and shielding rings installation
program is proposed to make the electric field strength on
critical positions below critical value and to improve the
potential distribution near the line end.
Based on the above studies, the structure of composite crossarm is finally determined to omit the suspension string, to
increase the length of cross-arms and to install proper shielding
and grading rings. The comparison of potential distribution
between composite cross-arms and normal line composite
insulators indicates the better potential distribution of composite
cross-arm. The results of electrical tests demonstrate the well
electrical performance of composite cross-arm.

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Xi Yang was born in Anhui province, China, in
1987. He received the Bachelor degree in electrical
engineering from Xian Jiaotong University in 2009.
Now he is working for the Ph.D. degree in highvoltage and insulation technology at Xian Jiaotong
University. His area of interest lies in numerical
calculation of power equipments and electromagnetic
environment research of transmission lines and
substations.
Naiyi Li was born in Zhejiang province, China, in
1988. He received the Bachelor degree in electrical
engineering from Xian Jiaotong University, Xian,
China, in 2011. Now he is working for the Ph.D.
degree in high-voltage and insulation technology at
Xian Jiaotong University. His area of interest lies in
electromagnetic environment and electromagnetic
compatibility research of E/UHV substations and
transmission lines.

Zongren Peng was born in Shaanxi province, China,

in 1953. He graduated from Major of Insulation,
Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Xian Jiaotong
University, Xian, China, in 1977. He is currently a
professor at State Key Laboratory of Electrical
Insulation and Power Equipment, Xian Jiaotong
University. His research fields are the high voltage
and electrical insulation technology, including the
insulation structure optimization and the calculation
of complex fields, the forming mechanism of space
charges in dielectrics and its measurement methods, and the materials,
structure and electrical properties of UHV AC/DC bushings.

IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation

Vol. 21, No. 4; August 2014

Jintao Liao was born in Chongqing, China, in 1987.

He received the Bachelor degree in electrical
engineering from Xian Jiaotong University, Xian,
China, in 2010. Now he is working for the Ph.D.
degree in high-voltage and insulation technology at
Xian Jiaotong University. His research fields of
interest are structure design and optimization of
extra-high voltage and ultra-high voltage insulation
system.

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Qingyu Wang was born in Henan province, China,
in 1991. She received the Bachelor degree in
electrical Engineering from Xian Jiaotong
University, Xian, China, in 2013. Currently she is a
Master degree candidate in high-voltage and
insulation technology at Xian Jiaotong University.
Her area of interest lies on outdoor insulation.