The purpose of this research is to develop a computational technique to determine the critical flashover voltage of electrical power distribution lines and to verify the computational technique experimentally. Given the field distribution for a specific transmission line configuration, the critical flashover voltage will be calculated using the streamer (Raether) mechanism of air breakdown. The effect of using insulator mounting hardware composed of a dielectric material as opposed to metal will be investigated to determine if any significant improvement in the critical flashover voltage is realized.
