Detection of Surface Icing Based on Piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (PMUTs)

Surface icing poses significant safety risks to railway and power systems by damaging insulators, which are crucial for maintaining power transmission line insulation. Existing optical ice detection methods are prone to environmental interference, resulting in high error rates, while capacitive detection is still underdeveloped for integration with composite insulators and are sensitive to environmental variations. An embedded detection device is ideal due to its minimal impact on the system, but it must meet size constraints to preserve the insulator's insulation properties. This paper proposed an ultrasonic-based ice detection method using piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs), which offer a compact design and improved acoustic impedance matching with various insulator materials.