A feasibility study on the application of radar imaging for the detection of transformer winding radial deformation

In this paper, a novel method for the detection and determination of the dimension and position of the winding radial deformation is presented. In this method, which is based on synthetic aperture radar imaging, an ultrawide-band transceiver is utilized to transmit a short pulse toward the transformer winding and measure its reflection at several points along a linear path. The measured signals, which bear the geometrical details of the winding, are further processed to take a 2-D image of the transformer. By analyzing this image, the occurrence of the radial deformation as well as its dimension and position can be detected. Experimental results for five different radial deformations are presented to verify the proposed method.