Investigation of sag behaviour for aluminium conductor steel reinforced considering tensile stress distribution

Sag calculation plays an important role in overhead line design. Since the tensile stress of aluminium conductor steel reinforced (ACSR) is required for the sag calculation, an analysis on sag behaviour when considering the tensile stress distribution can be very useful to improve the accuracy of sag results. First, this paper analyses the ACSR tensile stress distribution arising from the temperature maldistribution through proposing a new calculation formula. A finite-element analysis (FEA) model of ACSR is conducted for the solution of the new formula. By using the results, the error and limitations of the existing sag calculation methods for ACSR are discussed. As the critical point of sag calculation, knee-point temperature is solved iteratively involving the tensile stress maldistribution phenomenon in aluminium wires. Based on this iterative solution, an improved analytical method for the ACSR sag calculation considering the creep effect is presented and also compared with the hybrid sag method. The results show that these two methods are basically coincident without the consideration of creep effect, while there are non-negligible differences between them as the creep strain is involved. Compared with the existing analytical methods, the improved sag calculation method proposed in this paper can be applied in more extensive situations.