Abstract:Existing conductor icing models primarily rely on four environmental parameters: median volume diameter (MVD) of water droplets, liquid water content, wind speed, and ambient temperature, while giving limited attention to droplet size distribution characteristics. This study adopts the Langmuir droplet size distribution spectrum as a basis to develop finite element and analytical models for simulating water droplet collision characteristics on conductors. It compares the water droplet collision coefficient α1 calculated using the droplet size distribution spectrum with that obtained using MVD. Additionally, the concept of the characteristic median volume diameter dx is introduced. Results show that, compared to the finite element method, the analytical method offers significant advantages in terms of simplicity and computational efficiency, with an average error of approximately 0.1. The error Δα1 between α1 calculated using MVD and that derived from the size distribution spectrum depends on the distance between MVD and dx. The closer MVD is to dx, the smaller the Δα1 is, and vice versa.