The Transmission Line Modeling Method to Represent the Soil Ionization Phenomenon in Grounding Systems

This paper presents an extended methodology based on the transmission line modeling method (TLM) aiming at a soil ionization representation for the simulation of grounding systems. This natural phenomenon can be represented by considering the variation of the conductive components present in the TLM circuit. The proposed analytical formulation is introduced with a focus on the computational implementation of the TLM method in one dimension. The method is not subject to divergent solutions, being numerically stable and the methodology can be incorporated into a general algorithm irrespective of the soil properties or characteristics of the grounding electrode and lightning surge.