Optimized Portable Unilateral Magnetic Resonance Sensor for Assessing the Aging Status of Silicon Rubber Insulators

Silicone rubber insulators (SRIs) play an important role in high-voltage power transmission lines. Given that SRIs critically threaten the safe operation of the power grid, quantitatively assessing the aging status of SRIs in situ is crucial. In this article, a portable unilateral magnetic resonance (UMR) sensor with a U-shaped magnet structure and its measuring circuit were designed for the nondestructive detection of the aging status of SRIs in situ. First, the optimization efficiency of the magnet structure was improved through a uniform design method. Then, the planar radio frequency (RF) coil was designed by the finite-element method. Furthermore, the demagnetization effect of eddy currents induced in metal materials on the RF magnetic field was analyzed. We measured the SRI sheds at different service times and obtained the corresponding 1H transverse relaxation decay curves by importing the Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) sequence. Finally, the transverse relaxation decay curves were postprocessed using inverse Laplace transformation, and the 1-D spectrum distributions of transverse relaxation time (T2) were obtained. The results reveal that T2 of the surface of the SRI shed decreases as the service time of the SRI increases. In addition, the difference in T2 between the surface and interior of the SRI shed increases. The comparison experiments demonstrate that the U-shaped sensor designed in this article is superior to the curved sensor previously designed by our team. The effect of temperature variation on SRIs aging assessment was considered at last.