NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC COUPLING EFFECTS IN MEASUREMENTS OF FREQUENCY DEPENDENT SOIL ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES

—Recent studies show that the frequency dependent soil properties can significantly influence transient grounding resistance and, subsequently, lightning protection and reliability of the electrical grid. However, these properties require further research: for example, it is not clear what factors (apart from the low-frequency resistivity) should be taken into consideration to determine accurately the properties for a particular soil (without conducting laborious measurements). Additional experimental data are needed. When measurements are conducted, the electromagnetic coupling between circuits can cause significant measurement error at frequencies about several MHz. In order to estimate this error, it is convenient to use a calculation method, as in this case, it is possible to set particular frequency dependent properties for the ground and compare those with the calculated ones (using an electrode array). In the article, the electromagnetic coupling error is examined for several commonly used electrode arrays using the finite difference time domain method. This method allows simulating wires with infinite length, which is important for modeling pole-dipole and pole-pole arrays. Its drawback for this type of calculations, however, that it is relatively time-consuming. It was found that among the considered array configurations the error is smallest for the dipole-dipole arrays with the perpendicular allocation of the measurement wires and the pole-dipole array. By increasing the distance between particular parts of measurement wires, one can significantly reduce the error for some other arrays.