VALIDITY LIMITS OF THE EXPRESSION FOR MEASURING SOIL RESISTIVITY BY THE WENNER METHOD ACCORDING TO IEEE STANDARD 81-1983

Abstract

For the analysis of soil resistivity results and measurement, engineers have guidelines and instructions from various international standards at their disposal. The circumstances under which the mathematical expressions in these standards were obtained are not always clear. One such case is described in this article and refers to the international IEEE Standard 81-1983, an expression for apparent soil resistivity, and refers to a theoretical model and the prediction and interpretation of measurement results obtained by using the Wenner method of electrode arrangement. In IEEE Std. 81-1983, rod electrodes are modeled as spherical, which ultimately results in a simplified mathematical expression for apparent soil resistivity. Due to this simplification, the expression in this standard does not provide engineers with insight into its validity limits, i.e. accuracy.