Computation of Lightning Transients in Large Scale Multiconductor Systems

Abstract

The lightning transient computation is performed in this paper for large-scale multiconductor systems. The circuit parameters of the branches in a large-scale multiconductor system are represented by the resistances, inductances, and capacitances. An efficient algorithm is presented for evaluating the circuit parameters. With a segmentation for the branches, each group of the coupled segments in the multiconductor system is replaced with a coupled circuit unit. The electromagnetic coupling among the segments is taken into account by a simplified approach. The multiconductor system is then converted into a complete circuit model that comprises a large number of coupled circuit units. The lightning transient responses can be obtained from the transient solutions based on the circuit model. Laboratory measurement is made with a reduced-scale experimental setup. The measured results are compared with the computed ones to examine the validity of the circuit model. A numerical example is also given for investigating the distribution characteristic of lightning transient responses in an actual multiconductor system.