Influence of Soil Conductivity and Rod-to-Earth Gaps on Lightning Breakdown Voltage and Peak Current of Rod-to-Plane Air Gaps

Usama Khaled (1, 2) , Abderrahmane Beroual (3) , Salman Alissa (1) , Omar Aldraimli (1) , Abdulrahman Abanmi (1)

1 KSU - King Saud University [Riyadh]
2 Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Aswan University
3 EE - Ampère, Département Energie Electrique

This study deals with the influence of soil conductivity and a rod-to-earth electrode gap on lightning impulse voltages. Two types of soils are considered: homogeneous and non-homogeneous/heterogeneous. The heterogeneous soil consists of a metallic plate in contact with a parallelepiped tank filled with water or wetted sand of different conductivities. It is shown that, for homogeneous Earth, the U50 decreases when 50% increasing the soil conductivity and the electrodes gap decreases. For heterogeneous soil configuration and a given distance from the HV electrode to the metallic electrode, the U50 is higher for lower conductivities of 50% homogeneous soil.

Mots clés: Lightning discharge; soil conductivity; electrode gap; homogeneous Earth; heterogeneous Earth; U50% breakdown voltage

Domaines: Energie électrique

Usama Khaled, Abderrahmane Beroual, Salman Alissa, Omar Aldraimli, Abdulrahman Abanmi. Influence of Soil Conductivity and Rod-to-Earth Gaps on Lightning Breakdown Voltage and Peak Current of Rod-to-Plane Air Gaps. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 2019, 14 (22), pp.8362-8367. ⟨10.36478/jeasci.2019.8362.8367⟩. ⟨hal-02470711⟩