Wetting characteristics of the hydrophobic material surface through condensation

Abstract Composite insulators are generally considered to have excellent anti‐pollution flashover performance, but recently there has been a flashover accident on the indoor clean insulator in China, which is suspected to be related to the wetting of insulators through condensation. Therefore, this paper studied the water condensation on hydrophobic surfaces. The changes in the mass, length, and proportion of the water droplets on the hydrophobic surface during the wetting process were measured, and the influence of wetting degree on the flashover characteristics was studied. It was found that the insulator surface temperature lower than the dew point is a prerequisite for the wetting of the clean hydrophobic surface, and the wetting velocity increases with the electric field. The results could provide some reference for understanding the insulator flashover accidents.