Power Equipment Failure Forensics — Multiphysics FEM

When high-value equipment fails — a surge arrester, a power transformer, a synchronous generator — the question is rarely whether it failed but why, and whether the rest of the fleet is at risk. For a regional utility in Colombia, Gridradix performed finite-element forensic analyses of failed equipment: surge arresters subjected to fast-front lightning overvoltages and to temporary overvoltages from single-phase ground faults; power transformers under electrical and thermal stress; and synchronous generators, modelled electromagnetically in ANSYS. Each study combined EMT-level event reconstruction with component-level multiphysics modelling to pinpoint the failure mechanism.

• Root-cause analysis of surge arrester failures caused by fast-front overvoltages from lightning strikes, using EMTP event reconstruction and COMSOL Multiphysics component models.
• Root-cause analysis of surge arrester failures under temporary overvoltages arising from single-phase-to-ground faults.
• Finite-element modelling of power transformers in COMSOL Multiphysics — including 2D coupled electromagnetic–thermal analysis of windings under fault conditions.
• Electromagnetic finite-element modelling of synchronous generators in ANSYS to investigate failure modes.
• Correlation of simulated stress distributions with physical failure evidence, and definition of preventive measures for the remaining fleet.

Multiphysics FEM turned post-mortem inspections into quantified failure mechanisms — showing where and why stresses exceeded design limits — so the utility could target replacements and setting changes at the actual risk rather than replacing equipment fleet-wide.