Checking side clearances

By “side clearances” I mean horizontal clearances to structures near the line under blowout conditions.

Blowout temperature and wind pressure are set in Options. See the article https://polesnwires.com/articles/conductor-blowout/ for comments on suitable values for these settings.

One way to assess side clearances is using the Profiler plan view.

The Plan View function shows the line from above and draws an outline of the blowout conductor curve in addition to the groundline and poles. In the current version of the software the curve is drawn from the centre of each pole ie crossarm widths are not incorporated.

Export the plan view to a DXF file. Open the DXF file in your CAD program. You can draw an offset line adjacent to the blowout curve for the span you want to examine, the offset being the larger of the two crossarm lengths (from centre to end of crossarm) for that span. Using the longer crossarm length gives a worst case offset.

Now that you have modified the blowout curve to include crossarm lengths you can insert suitable objects representing structures near the line, then measure the distance between the structure and the blowout curve.