IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Vol. 16, No.

1; February 2009 139

Recurrent Plot Analysis of Leakage Current

for Monitoring Outdoor Insulator Performance
B. X. Du, Yong Liu, H. J. Liu
Key Laboratory of Power System Simulation and Control of Ministry of Education
School of Electrical Engineering and Automation
Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China

and Y. J. Yang
State Grid Electric Power Research Institute
Wuhan 430074, China

ABSTRACT
Outdoor insulators are widely accepted in power industry to maintain electrical
insulation ranging from distribution to transmission lines. Such increasing
development leads to a lack of appropriate diagnostic tools for assessing the
performance of insulator in service, particularly in contaminated conditions. In order
to monitor operating performance of contaminated outdoor insulators, a recurrent plot
technique is proposed to analyze the leakage current passing through the insulator
surface. Contamination tests were conducted in a laboratory by employing heavy salt
fog with the deposition of non-soluble contamination. The leakage current was
decomposed into different frequency components by using a wavelet transform
technique. The temporal sequence of the extracted component was extended to m-
dimensional phase space by using a phase-space reconstructed method. The recurrent
plot is obtained to show that the topological structure of the high-frequency
components is prominent to identify non-linear properties of discharge activities. Based
on the analysis of the high-frequency components, the quantitative indicators of
recurrent plot are obtained to reflect the underlying mechanism of flashover process.
The results obtained indicate that the recurrent plot technique gives visual recurrent
patterns of discharge activities for monitoring outdoor insulator performance. The
dynamic behaviors on the insulator surface are graphically illustrated on the
rectangular block structures with higher density of points. The structure changes
indicate the switches of discharge states during the flashover process.
Index Terms —outdoor insulator, heavy salt fog, leakage current, frequency
component, recurrent plot, monitoring, dynamic performance, flashover process.

1 INTRODUCTION costs and minimizing risk of damage to people and property,

WITH increasing application in wet and contaminated
conditions, such as salt-fog environments, outdoor insulators
are exposed to long-term humidity and severe contamination.
Once the moisture on the insulator surface is condensed to
form continuous wet film, leakage current will be driven by
source voltage to pass through the conductive layer. Thermal
energy produced by the current cause evaporation of the
layer and formation of dry-band gaps. Once the electric field
at these gaps reaches the breakdown strength of air, dry-band
discharges will occur. Due to initiation and development of
the discharges, flashover may take place and affect operating
reliability of power systems. From the viewpoint of reducing
Manuscript received on 27 May 2008, in final form 4 November 2008.
it is urgent to develop methods for monitoring outdoor
insulator performance in contaminated environments [1].
The extensive methods for monitoring and evaluating
contaminated outdoor insulators are equivalent salt deposit
density (ESDD) and non-soluble deposit density (NSDD).
Actually, they are inadequate to reflect real-time insulator
performance. Therefore, leakage current is proposed to
provide valuable information for determining the insulator
condition. The surge counting, the current peak recording
and the charge measurement have already been employed
as the evaluation and monitoring methods [2, 3]. However,
the peak value does not always match the discharge
activities [4]. The further monitoring tool is presented
based on harmonic components of leakage current.

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 140 B. X. Du et al.: Recurrent Plot Analysis of Leakage Current for Monitoring Outdoor Insulator Performance
Methods of wavelet transform, Fourier series and spectral
analysis have been employed to analyze the frequency
characteristics for the evaluation and monitoring [4-7].
The capacitive and resistive characteristics of leakage
current show the low frequency components, and the dry-
band discharges show higher value of third and fifth
harmonic components [5]. Based on value ratio of
fundamental and third harmonic components, leakage
current is separated into sinusoidal, local arc and their
transition components [6]. In addition, the transition of
leakage current until the flashover is divided into six
stages based on the variation of the low-frequency
components [7]. Meanwhile, the high-frequency
components are simply proposed to predict the flashover
and monitor the contaminated condition of outdoor
insulators [8]. However, these researches and results
mostly focus on peak value of leakage current and its
harmonic components. It is still difficult to accurately
reflect the underlying characteristics of discharge
sequences during the flashover process. The lack of
appropriate diagnostic methods is still one of the main
disadvantages for the monitoring and evaluation [1]. It is
incessantly expected for further investigation on the
characteristic analysis of leakage current in the insulator
monitoring system.
In this work, a recurrent plot (RP) technique is applied as a
novel monitoring tool to investigate non-linear characteristics
of leakage current on double-shed ceramic insulators by
using artificial contamination test. Experiments were carried
out through applying heavy salt fog with the deposit of non-
soluble contamination. Based on the wavelet transform
technique, typical frequency components of the leakage
current during the flashover process are extracted as the low,
middle and high frequency components. The RP of the
frequency components gives a visual monitoring method for
insulator performance.
2 EXPERIMENTAL ARRANGEMENT
The experimental arrangement is shown in Figure 1.
Experiments were carried out on one type of suspension
ceramic insulator (XWP2-70). The specimens were double-
shed, having height of 146 mm, diameter of 255 mm and
leakage distance of 400 mm.
Contamination tests were conducted in an artificial salt-
fog chamber. There are many contaminant and fog methods
adopted as artificial contamination methods [9]. In our
experiments, the process of artificial contamination test is as
follows: Firstly, the insulator surface was evenly coated with
diatomite powder at NSDD of 1.0 mg/cm2. Immediately after
being dried in a drying room for 24 h, the specimen was
vertically hung in the chamber. Then salt fog was generated
by an ultrasonic vibration salt-fog generator filled with saline
water, making ESDD of 0.4 mg/cm2. When relative humidity
reached 100% at room temperature, ac voltage of 66 kVrms at
50 Hz was maintained until the flashover occurred. The
transition of leakage current until the flashover was recorded
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Figure 1. Experimental set-up.
by using an analog to digital (A/D) converter, with the
sampling frequency of 5 kHz.
3 PROCESSING OF LEAKAGE CURRENT
3.1 RP TECHNIQUE
RP is a useful processing tool since it provides a graphical
framework for extracting information from time series of
signals [10]. It can visualize the degree of aperiodicity of
time series in m dimensional phase space. The non-linear
characteristics of dynamic courses within signals can be
illustrated on a map, which is composed of visible
rectangular block structures with higher density of points. If
the texture of pattern within such a block is homogeneous,
stationarity is assumed for the given signal within the
corresponding period of time.
The RP is formed by comparing all embedded vectors with
each other, and drawing points when the distance between
two vectors is below the threshold. Such a RP method can be
mathematically expressed as:
Ri,j=H(İ-಩ X(i)-X(j)಩ 2), X(i),X(j) ෛ Rm, i,j ෛ (1.M) (1)
where İ is the predefined threshold of time series; H(x) is the
Heaviside function; m is the embedding dimension; X(i)
=[x(ti),x(ti+1IJ),x(ti+2IJ)…x(ti+(m-1)IJ)] (i=0,1,2…M) are vectors
reconstructed from the sampled time series x(tj)=x(t0+jǻt)
(j=1,2,3…N); ǻt is the sampling time; M is the total number
of X(i) and N is the length of the time series. The value one in
this matrix is plotted by the color point in RP. The delay time
IJ and the embedding dimension m are all chosen according to
C-C method [11].
The threshold value of İ is critical, if it is too big, it will
produce the irrelevant points, and if it is too small, the useful
information will be lost. However, there is no strict standard
to select the İ. Most researchers give the conclusion that the
threshold value can be selected as 0.25ı, where ı is the
standard deviation [10-12]. Figure 2 shows an example of RP
drawing from a typical discharge series. Geometrical
properties of the plots provide complexity and local rate of
divergence estimates. The RP consists of isolated dots, dots
joined into line segments (two or more adjacent dots) and
 IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation
(a) A part of discharge waveform
(b) RP of discharge waveform
Figure 2. Example of RP for typical discharge current.
white spaces. Point density and white segments are in
accordance with non-linear features of signals. A recurrent
point means that the distance of two neighborhood vectors X(i)
and X(j) in phase space is less than or equal to the threshold İ.
The main diagonal exists in all the structures, which
corresponds to the fact that the distance between vector X(i)
and X(i) is zero. The higher point density means that the
distance between reconstructed vectors X(i), X(j) in phase space
changes slowly. This indicates that the embedding vectors are
very similar to the neighbor vectors in m-dimensional phase
space. Lower point density stands for a relatively dispersal
process. The white space indicates the rapid changes of the
amplitude.
In order to quantitatively describe the characteristics of
RP, the recurrent rate (RR) and determinism (DET) [13]
were calculated. RR denotes the degree of nearness for the
vectors in the phase space. A bigger value of RR means the
closer distance between the vectors. DET differentiates the
recurrent points connected with each other in the diagonal
direction from the isolated recurrent points in a RP map. A
smaller value of DET denotes the investigated system has
less deterministic ingredient.
3.2 EXTRACTION OF FREQUENCY
COMPONENTS
Waveform distortion of leakage current is associated with
discharge activities having different frequency properties.
Extraction of frequency components and analysis of their
characteristics are useful for monitoring outdoor insulator
performance [6].
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Vol. 16, No. 1; February 2009 141
Wavelet transform, with advantages over Fourier
transform for signal analysis with transient features, provides
substantial information for processing signals with property
of localization in time and frequency domains [14]. It is
considered as one of the best solutions for extracting the
frequency characteristics and has been utilized as a practical
scale for various signal processing. Wavelet analysis
decomposes original signal into approximation and detail
signals. The approximation signals correspond to the low
frequency components and the detail signals correspond to
the high frequency components. Choosing different mother
wavelet and number of decomposition level, different results
will be obtained.
In this study, the wavelet transform is applied to extract
the frequency components of leakage current for further
analysis of the current characteristics. The chosen mother
wavelet is the Daubechies series mother of complex
conjugate function with the formulation as follows:
1 f §t b·
W (a, b) ³ x(t ) ˜ <g* ¨ ¸dt (2)
a f
© a ¹
§ t 2 ·­ ª Z 2 º ½ (3)
< g (t )exp ¨¨  ¸¸ ® exp > j Z t @  exp «  »¾
© 2 ¹¯ ¬ 2 ¼¿
where W(a,b) is the complex wavelet transform coefficient;
x(t) is the time-domain leakage current; Ȍ*g (t) denotes the
complex conjugate of Ȍg (t), which is the chosen mother
wavelet; Ȧ is the constant at 2ʌ; a and b are respectively the
scale and the translate. The modulus and the phase of
complex W(a,b) correspond to the time-frequency
information and the localized amplitude regarding the current
in the cycle a vicinity in time b [15].
4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 EXTRACTED FREQUENCY COMPONENTS
OF LEAKAGE CURRENT
Based on the frequency extraction method described above,
the leakage current is decomposed into details and
approximation signals up to 10 levels using “Daubechies 8”
wavelet. An example of leakage current just prior to the
flashover was investigated and the decomposed components
are shown in Figure 3, where s indicates the original leakage
current; ch1 shows the component at the frequency of 50 Hz;
ch2 shows 150 Hz; ch3 shows 250 Hz; ch4 shows 350-650
Hz; ch5 shows 650-1250 Hz; ch6 shows 1250 Hz to 2500 Hz.
The conductive and capacitive components of leakage
current are mostly concentrated on the levels ch1 and ch2.
The detail levels ch3 to ch6 clearly show all of the discharge
signals on the insulator surface. This indicates that the
frequency properties of discharge components are much
higher than those of conductive and interference components.
Based on the present investigation of frequency
characteristics [4-8], the frequency components can be
separated into three parts: ch1 to ch3 are regarded as the low-
frequency components; ch4 to ch5 as the middle-frequency
components and ch6 as the high-frequency components.
 142 B. X. Du et al.: Recurrent Plot Analysis of Leakage Current for Monitoring Outdoor Insulator Performance
Figure 3. Frequency extraction of leakage current just prior to flashover: s
indicates the original leakage current; ch1 shows the component at the
frequency of 50 Hz; ch2 shows 150 Hz; ch3 shows 250 Hz; ch4 shows 350-
650 Hz; ch5 shows 650-1250 Hz; ch6 shows 1250 Hz to 2500 Hz.
4.2 RP ANALYSIS OF DECOMPOSED
FREQUENCY COMPONENTS
Although the extracted frequency components are
associated with different discharge properties, the underlying
variation and characteristics can not be revealed. Then the
RP is constructed to show the non-linear characteristics and
visual identification of state transitions during the flashover
process. The topological structure graphically reflects the
dynamic performance by visualizing the current in m-
dimensional phase space. Based on the knowledge that in
certain scope, the values of embedding dimension m and
delay time IJ almost have no effect on the topological
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structure [10], where m and IJ are chosen as 5 and 20
according to the C-C method.
Figure 4 shows RP topological structures of the
decomposed frequency components of leakage current just
prior to the flashover. The low-frequency components (ch1
to ch3) are mostly related to the resistive and capacitive
properties, which are relatively stationary in the leakage
current. Peak values of fundamental and third-order
harmonics are considered as important information for
monitoring outdoor insulator conditions [4-6]. However, it is
found that the flashover does not always occur with variation
of the peak value [7]. Such results can be well reflected in
RP structures of the low-frequency components, as shown in
Figures 4a to 4c, which are relatively stable due to the layer
of electrolytic solution. The conductive layer is mostly
dependent upon the moisture absorption influenced by the
humidity level. When the humidity is 100% and sustains for
a certain time, the insulator surface starts absorbing moisture
until saturation from surroundings. The total amount of salt
fog absorbed is sufficiently available to reduce the surface
resistance, which leads to more conductive currents
associated with discharge activities. The low-frequency
components are mostly comprised of the resistive and
capacitive currents. Thus the RP almost shows the consistent
variety, which is regularly parallel to the main diagonal.
Such deterministic structure and high degree of regularity
suggest fewer complex activities on the insulator surface,
which does not well reflect substantial changes of discharge
activities for the propagation of flashover.
Figures 4d and 4e show RP structures of the middle-
frequency components (ch4 to ch5). Discharges at this
frequency range occur stably at both positive and negative
cycles of the sinusoidal waveform throughout the flashover
process. Therefore, the RP structures still have some
regularity, that is, some lines formed by the recurrent points
parallel to the main diagonal, which indicates more
embedding vectors are the same or very similar to other
vectors. The random distribution of recurrent points in Figure
4e indicates less correlation between the embedding vectors,
which is in accordance with the performance of discharge
activities. With the increase of thermal energy produced by
conductive currents, evaporation of electrolytic solution is
accelerated. When the evaporation rate is higher than the
condensation rate, dry-band activities will appear in the
partial locations. With simultaneous occurrence of enhanced
electric field, weak discharges showing higher frequency
characteristics mainly occur across the dry band. The random
occurrence means little correlation among the discharges.
Thus the non-linear characteristics are reflected by the
disperse points, as shown in Figure 4e. The increasing non-
stationary and complexity in the RP structure indicate that
the randomly dynamic activities dominate the insulator
surface.
With propagation of dry-band activities, the weak local
arcs join together to form the intensive dry-band discharges,
which is the essential cause for the flashover. Figure 4f
shows RP structure of the high-frequency components (ch6),
which is significantly different from those shown in Figures
 IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation
(a) ch1
(d) ch4
Figure 4. RP of decomposed components of leakage current just prior to the flashover: ch1 shows the component at the frequency of 50 Hz; ch2 shows 150 Hz;
ch3 shows 250 Hz; ch4 shows 350-650 Hz; ch5 shows 650-1250 Hz; ch6 shows 1250 Hz to 2500 Hz.
4a to 4e. The dense points indicate the stationary state of
intensive dry-band discharges. The white blank segments stand
for the transition state, which means the switches of different
discharge states. The alternation between the dense points and
the blank segments demonstrates the intermittent groups of
dry-band discharges. The scope of concentrative points shows
sustained duration of the discharges. Such highest complexity
of RP structure reveals intensive discharge activities and their
switches on the insulator surface, which is an indication of the
imminent flashover. Therefore, the RP of the high frequency
components is well in accordance with the transition
performance of insulator surface to the flashover.
4.3 RP ANALYSIS FOR MONITORING
FLASHOVER PROCESS
The leakage current during the flashover process is
generally divided into the initial, intermediate, just prior to
flashover and flashover stages [7, 8]. At the initial stage, the
current waveforms are always sinusoidal due to the resistive
current driven by the source voltage. When only a few faint
discharges occur, the waveforms have a little distortion into
the triangular shape. As the discharges are weak and the
resistive performance dominates the insulator surface, the
current magnitudes are small. The intermediate stage is
transition from the initial stage to the just to flashover stage,
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Vol. 16, No. 1; February 2009 143
(b) ch2 (c) ch3
(e) ch5 (f) ch6
during which the peak value of the current increases. Such
transition of leakage current is due to the occurrence of weak
local arcs on the insulator surface. At the just prior to
flashover stage, the current waveforms are similar to pulse
wave. The larger magnitude is measured, which is in
accordance with intensive local arcs clearly observed on the
insulator surface. With development of the weak local arcs,
they connect together and generate the arcing channel, which
is initial trace of the flashover.
From the viewpoint of operating safety and reliability of
outdoor insulators, the information of insulator performance
before the flashover is essential to the monitoring system [7].
As discussed above, the characteristics of high-frequency
components well reflect the discharge properties. Therefore,
RP topological structures of the high-frequency components
(1250 to 2500 Hz) during the flashover are established in
Figure 5, where (a) is just application of test voltage, (b) to (e)
are the transition process and (f) is just prior to the flashover.
Visual assessment of the structures qualitatively shows
dissimilar states during the flashover process.
As observed at the initial stage (stage 1 and stage 2), only
a few faint discharges occurred on the insulator surface. The
dense recurrent points in Figures 5a and 5b show a high
correlation of leakage current in m-dimension space.
Reflected in the RP, the lines formed by recurrent points are
 144 B. X. Du et al.: Recurrent Plot Analysis of Leakage Current for Monitoring Outdoor Insulator Performance
(a) stage 1
(d) stage 4
Figure 5. RP of high-frequency components during flashover process: stage 1 is the initial application of test voltage; stages 2 to 5 are respectively 6, 4, 3 and 1
minutes before the flashover; stage 6 is just before the flashover.
parallel to the main diagonal, which indicates the
comparatively stationary performance on the insulator
surface. The same non-linear characteristics are owing to the
resistive and capacitive properties.
From stage 2 to stage 3, the parallel lines disappear and
only the discrete points remain in the RP as shown in Figure
5c. Such transition shows the appearance of weak local
arcing discharges. It indicates that the embedding vectors of
high-frequency components have less correlation in m-
dimension phase space, which is in accordance with the
randomness of discharge activities. And the high density of
RP points in Figure 5d reflects the weak discharges become
denser on the insulator surface. When the weak discharges
connect and form the intensive arcing discharges, the RP
density becomes lower to reveal the appearance of discharge
channel, as shown in Figure 5e. Once the intensive
discharges continuously appear and connect to form the
comparatively stable discharge channel, the station of
insulator surface turns into dry-band discharges. With the
alternating discharges, the RP structure is composed of white
space segments and concentrated recurrent points, as shown
in Figure 5f. The white segments indicate the intermission of
intensive discharges and the dense points indicate the
intensive arcing discharges. Such transition between the two
segments means the coming flashover.
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(b) stage 2 (c) stage 3
(e) stage 5 (f) stage 6
4.4 RP QUANTITATIVE INDICATORS
Figure 6 shows the quantitative indicators of RP of the
high-frequency components during the flashover process.
Both RR and DET decrease from the initial stage to just
before the flashover. The varying tendency of RR shows that
the regular performance on the insulator surface decreases due
to the increasing faint discharges, and then the weak local
discharges, finally due to the formation of intensive discharge
channel. The variation of DET reveals the reducing
characteristics of deterministic ingredients in the high-
frequency components. The results of both RR and DET are
consistent with the variations of RP topological structures in
Figure 5.
As mentioned above, the low and middle frequency
components inadequately demonstrate substantial properties
of discharge activities, which otherwise can be well reflected
by RP structure and its quantitative indicators of high-
frequency components, as shown in Figures 4 to 6. For the
low-frequency components (fundamental and third-order
harmonics), the variation of peak value is consistent with the
present investigation [4-7], but the related RP shows
comparatively stationary performance. Thus the low-
frequency component does not adequately reflect the
discharge activities. For the middle-frequency components,
 IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Vol. 16, No. 1; February 2009 145

they may be mostly ignored for the analysis as they have
fewer values and contain little information. For the high-
frequency components, the corresponding changes of RP
characteristics are prominent to reflect the flashover process,
which further confirms the availability for monitoring
insulator performance.
0.6
Initial Stage
0.4
of discharge activities for the propagation of flashover
process.
(3) Recurrent plot of the middle-frequency components
insufficiently reflects non-linear properties of discharge
activities on the insulator surface, thus can be ignored for
monitoring the insulator performance.
(4) Recurrent plot of the high-frequency components is
well in accordance with the transition performance of
insulator surface to the flashover. It is effective as a visual
monitoring method to provide useful information of insulator
performance.

Intermediate Stage
RR

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research work is sponsored by National Nature
0.2
Science Foundation of China (NSFC 50777048) and
National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program)
(No.2009CB219700).
Just Prior to Flashover
0
(a) RR during flashover process
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Leakage current and its non-linear characteristics have
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 146 B. X. Du et al.: Recurrent Plot Analysis of Leakage Current for Monitoring Outdoor Insulator Performance

B. X. Du (M’00-SM’04) received the M.E. degree H. J. Liu was born in Hengshui, China, on 9 March
in electrical engineering from Ibaraki University in 1981. He received the M.E. degree from the School
1993 and the Ph.D. degree from Tokyo University of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Tianjin
of Agriculture and Technology in 1996. He was an University in 2007. He is currently engaged in
Associated Professor at Niigata College of research on the dielectric breakdown mechanisms of
Technology, Japan. Now, he is a Professor at the polymer insulating materials for his Ph.D. thesis
Department of Electrical Engineering, School of study at the same school.
Electrical Engineering and Automation, Tianjin
University, China. His main research interests are
dielectric failure mechanisms of polymer insulating
materials, electrical insulation technology and partial discharge
measurements. He is a member of IEEJ and senior member of CSEE.

Yong Liu was born in Tangshan, China, on 8 Y. J. Yang is the chief engineer and director in
December 1980. He received the M.E. degree in Wuhan High Voltage Research Institute of SGCC.
electrical engineering from Tianjin University, His major research field is the performance of
China, in 2006. He is currently a Doctor student at outdoor insulation.
School of Electrical Engineering and Automation in
the same university. His main research interests are
dielectric breakdown mechanisms of polymeric
insulating materials and degradation of polymer
insulators under multi-effect environments.

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