The influence of lightning conductor radii on the attachment of lightning flashes

Abstract

The influence of the tip radius of lightning conductors on their lightning attractive distance as predicted by the self-consistent leader inception and propagation model (SLIM) is presented. The results show that in the absence of any glow corona from the tip of the conductor a smaller tip radius gives rise to a larger attractive radius than a larger radius. It is suggested that the reason for the experimental observations which show that blunt conductors are more efficient lightning receptors than sharp ones is the presence of glow corona at the tip of the sharp ones during the time of lightning strikes. Moreover, in a given background electric field, the probability of the inception of glow corona at the conductor tip increases with increasing conductor height and decreasing conductor radius. Thus, in a given electric field, as the conductor height increases its radius has to be increased to avoid the inception of glow corona at the tip. For this reason, the conductor radius that performs best as a lightning interceptor depends on the height of the conductor and the best performance shift from smaller radii to larger ones with increasing height of the conductor.