Research on the Influence of Span on Wind Deflection Angle of Insulator Strings in Stochastic Wind Fields

This paper presents an independently developed finite element analysis software built on the QT and VTK platforms. Its core innovation is the integration of the analytical solution from catenary theory with nonlinear finite element methods. The software accurately predicts the initial configuration and tension distribution of conductors based on catenary theory, utilizing these results as high-precision initial values for static equilibrium iterations. This approach overcomes the convergence difficulties commonly encountered in traditional commercial software when analyzing such flexible cable structures. Using this software, we systematically investigated the nonlinear effects of asymmetric span arrangements on the mean value and standard deviation of wind deflection angles, and subsequently established a practical wind deflection calculation model that accounts for span asymmetry. The study reveals that higher wind speeds lead to larger wind deflection angles, with static wind deflection angles approximating the mean values under pulsating wind conditions. When one span length is fixed, the wind deflection angle first increases and then decreases as the adjacent span length increases. Symmetrical span arrangements were found to amplify the fluctuation range of the wind deflection angles. The research further developed polynomial regression models to systematically analyze the influence of wind speed and span length on dynamic amplification factors and elucidate their interactions and nonlinear relationships. Finally, based on symbolic regression and least squares methods, three expressions for the dynamic amplification factor in terms of span length and wind speed were derived. These formulas all demonstrate certain engineering applicability for predicting the dynamic amplification factor.