Seismic Performance Assessment of Insulated and Conventional Cross‐Arms Transmission Tower‐Line System

ABSTRACT The electrical safety gap between conductors and trees can be increased by substituting insulated cross‐arms for conventional cross‐arms, which is increasingly used in the rehabilitation of existing transmission lines. To study the seismic performance of insulated cross‐arm transmission tower structures, this paper establishes transmission single tower and tower‐line system finite model and performs mechanical analysis of the cross‐arm and nonlinear dynamic response analysis of the structure under 150 seismic conditions of different parameters. The relationship between seismic strength and structural response is fitted, and the seismic performance of the transmission tower structure is evaluated. The results show that by substituting insulated cross‐arms for conventional cross‐arms, the maximum displacement of the vertex of the single tower and tower‐line system model can be reduced by 20.43% and 111.83%, respectively; when PGA = 0.2 g, the probability of collapse of a single tower structure and a tower‐line system can be reduced by 0.49% and 11.66%, respectively. The research in this paper provides a useful reference for the further application of insulating cross‐arms.