On the attachment of lightning flashes to grounded structures with special attention to the comparison of SLIM with CVM and EGM

Abstract

Lightning attachment to vertical grounded conductors are presented with special attention to the lightning attractive radii of vertical conductors as predicted by self consistent leader inception and propagation model (SLIM), Electro Geometrical Model (EGM) and Collection Volume Method (CVM). Moreover, SLIM was utilized to model the attachment of a slanted stepped leader to a tall tower that resulted in a side flash to a point below the top of the tower. The important conclusions to be drawn from the results obtained are the following: (a) The error (caused by neglect of the connecting leader in EGM) in the predicted attractive radii and the striking distance of EGM increases with increasing structure height. However, for structures whose height is shorter than about 30 m the error associated with using EGM is less than about 20%. (b) The attractive radii predicted by the Collection Volume Method (CVM) are much larger than the ones predicted by SLIM and EGM. Thus, the use of CVM to locate the lightning conductors on a structure may undermine its safety. (c) Slanted stepped leader channels can cause side flashes in tall structures even though long connecting leaders are emitted from the top of the structure.