Imaging the Corrosion in Grounding Grid Branch with Inner-Source Electrical Impedance Tomography

The corrosion diagnosis of grounding grid can locate the corroded branches and provide guidance for the maintenance and repair of the grounding grid. This paper proposed the electrical impedance tomography (EIT) method on the corrosion diagnosis of grounding grid and described how it works. Firstly, the inverse problem model of the electrical impedance tomography on grounding grid is developed. Secondly, in order to weaken the ill-posedness of the inverse problem, a Newton iterative algorithm with Tikhonov regularization is proposed to solve the problem. Then, due to the high resistivity contrast between the soli and steel and the large size of imaging region, this paper presents the method of soil-separation and block-diagnosis to accomplish these problems. Finally, field experiments were carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method and the results show that the location and degree of the corrosion in the grounding grid can be easily judged from the imaging results.