Experimental study on the thermal conductivity for transmission line icing

• An experimental method of icing thermal conductivity is proposed.
• Icing density is the major influential parameter of icing thermal conductivity.
• Thermal conductivity can be expressed by quadratic function and the parallel model.
• The thermal conductivity can improve the prediction accuracy in de-icing projects.

Both practices and experiments have shown that the thermal conductivity of icing has an obvious influence on ice-melting process, but it is ignored by most of the existing models which set the simulation parameter as a constant. In this paper, an experimental study is conducted to investigate the thermal conductivity for overhead transmission line icing. Based on the test data in artificial icing laboratory, a quadratic equation of thermal conductivity and icing density is presented. And then, the equation of icing thermal conductivity is employed to simulate the critical ice-melting current and ice-melting time. The results of the experiment and simulation show that the thermal conductivity can improve the prediction accuracy in thermal de-icing projects, with the mean error of 4% and 14%, respectively.