Transient phenomena at point of strike for lightning strokes to concrete wall of building structures

Tall buildings are vulnerable to suffer lightning. Lightning usually directly hits the lightning protection system (LPS) of buildings, but occasionally lightning may hit a non-conductive part of buildings, such as corner of concrete wall. In this paper, finite element method is utilized to simulate the transient phenomenon of the building suffering lightning and the transient currents flowing along the reinforcing steel bar branches are calculated. Lightning strokes to LPS is compared with lightning strokes to concrete wall, and then the variation curves of the transient electric potential and the transient impedance at the injection point are given. The trends of the transient electric potential and impedance of different concrete wall conductivity ranging from 10^-7 to 100 S/m were determined.