Detection of defects in composite insulators based on laser‐induced plasma combined with machine learning

Abstract Due to Prolonged operation and external environmental factors, composite insulators may develop various defects, which can potentially lead to serious accidents in power systems. Detecting and analyzing these defects is critically important. In this study, we combine machine learning with laser‐induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) to identify defects in composite insulators and obtain spectral data from both defective and nondefective samples. The Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection algorithm was employed to reduce the dimensionality of the data, thereby enhancing detection accuracy and efficiency. Decision tree, random forest (RF), K‐nearest neighbor, and support vector machine algorithms were used to classify the dimensionality‐reduced data. The results indicate that the RF algorithm achieved the best classification performance, with accuracies of 100% and 95.46% for the training and test sets, respectively. Furthermore, the precision, recall, and F1 scores, which reflect model performance, also showed superior results with the RF algorithm. These findings suggest that the combination of LIBS technology and machine learning can rapidly and accurately detect and analyze defects in composite insulators, offering new insights and methods for defect detection in composite insulators.