Time-Domain Analysis and Experimental Verification of Portable Grounding System’s TGR

Abstract

The portable grounding system plays an important role in the lightning protection system of mobile equipments. But the traditional earth electrodes composed of vertical rods wouldn’t work well or would take a long time to set up in some conditions such as frozen soil, hard clay and so on. In this paper, a new type of portable grounding system which can be quickly spread and folded has been designed. To analyze the TGR’s (Transient Grounding Resistance) time-domain characteristics, the grounding systems have been modeled and simulated with FDTD (Finite Difference Time Domain). The influence rule of electrodes’ number and down-lead’s position to TGR has been studied with numerical analysis and validated with experiments. The results show that the new grounding system works well even on cement floor.