Parametric dependence of lightning impulse behavior of grounding electrodes buried in a dispersive and ionized lossy soil under first- and subsequent-stroke currents

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the simultaneous effects of ionization and dispersion of soil on the impulse behavior of grounding electrodes under first and subsequent stroke currents. Design/methodology/approach A recently introduced technique called improved multi-conductor transmission line (MTL) is simplified for grounding electrodes buried in both-affected soils. Findings The simulation results show that including the two effects simultaneously in highly resistive soils under high-valued subsequent stroke current is recommended. Otherwise, simultaneous effects can be disregard. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no research on sensitivity analyses for the simultaneous inclusion of the two effects on the effective length and the induced voltage on the soil surface. To this end, the simplified MTL is applied to the grounding electrodes. The simulation results show that the computational efficiency in comparison with previous methods is, first, considerably increased. Second, the simultaneous effects result in decreasing the soil surface voltage with respect to situations where either ionization or dispersion is taken into account (single-affected soils). In other words, the performance of grounding systems is improved. Third, the effective length in both-affected soil is has a middle value with respect to the single-affected soil. Such findings practically and financially are of importance.