FDTD simulation of lightning current along vertical grounding rod appended to a horizontal grounding grid

Vertical grounding rods are usually needed to be appended to a horizontal grounding grid to decrease the grounding resistance. When a lightning current flows through a grounding grid appended by some vertical rods, it's valuable to reasonably arrange these vertical rods to reach an optimum design. In this paper, lightning discharge current distribution among the vertical grounding rods appended to a horizontal grounding grid are numerically calculated by FDTD (finite-difference time-domain) method. The discharge effectiveness of the vertical grounding rod appended at different position is compared. The shielding effect of a horizontal grounding grid to obstruct the lightning current to flow downward is shown. The conclusions obtained will give a reasonable guidance for the formation and reformation of grounding grid.

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