A numerical formulation for grounding analysis in stratified soils

Author

Colominas, Ignasi ; Navarrina, Fermín ; Casteleiro, Manuel

Author_Institution

Dept. of Appl. Math., La Coruna Univ., Spain

Volume

17

Issue

2

fYear

2002

fDate

4/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

587

Lastpage

595

Abstract

The design of safe grounding systems in electrical installations is essential to assure the security of the persons, the protection of the equipment and the continuity of the power supply. In order to achieve these goals, it is necessary to compute the equivalent electrical resistance of the system and the potential distribution on the earth surface when a fault condition occurs. In this paper we present a formulation for the analysis of grounding systems embedded in stratified soils, on the basis of the boundary element method (BEM). Suitable arrangements of the final discretized equations allow us to use the highly efficient analytical integration techniques derived by the authors for grounding systems buried in uniform soils. The feasibility of this approach is demonstrated by applying the BEM formulation to the analysis of a real grounding system with a two-layer soil model

Keywords

boundary-elements methods; earthing; soil; BEM; boundary element method; earth surface; electrical installations; equipment protection; equivalent electrical resistance; fault condition; grounding analysis; grounding systems; integration techniques; layered soils; numerical formulation; personnel safety; potential distribution; power supply continuity; real grounding system; safe grounding systems; stratified soils; two-layer soil model; Boundary element methods; Distributed computing; Earth; Electric resistance; Grounding; Power supplies; Power system protection; Power system security; Soil; Surface resistance;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Power Delivery, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0885-8977

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/61.997943

Filename

997943