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.