To explore the influence mechanism of trace H 2 O on SF 6 decomposition characteristics under partial thermal fault and establish the foundation of using SF 6 thermal decomposition principle to diagnose the thermal fault of SF 6 electrical equipment, a series of artificial thermal fault decomposition experiments with different H 2 O concentrations were conducted on the designed SF 6 thermal decomposition experimental system. A trace water injector was used to control the content of trace H 2 O accurately and gas chromatograph, chromatography-mass spectrometry as well as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were used to measure decomposed components. Finally, the thermal decomposition characteristic under 340 ℃ was achieved. The analysis results indicate no matter how much H 2 O content is, SF 6 can decomposes into many kinds of decomposition characteristics, such as CO 2 , SOF 2 , SO 2 , SOF 4 , SO 2 F 2 , H 2 S, HF. The concentrations of all these decomposition characteristics increase with the time extended, but change differently with the increase of H 2 O content, because H 2 O plays different role in the formation process of each decomposition characteristic components. The variation of H 2 O content not only affects the production of the decomposition characteristic components, but also makes SO 2 and HF gradually evolved into the main characteristic components of SF 6 thermal decomposition. In addition, the higher the H 2 O content is, the stronger the promoting effect on SO 2 and HF is.