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On the field‐to‐current conversion factors for lightning strike to tall objects considering the finitely conducting ground
Author(s) -
Zhang Qilin,
He Lixia,
Ji Tongtong,
Hou Wenhao
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: atmospheres
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-8996
pISSN - 2169-897X
DOI - 10.1002/2014jd021496
Subject(s) - lightning (connector) , current (fluid) , conductivity , lightning strike , object (grammar) , physics , field (mathematics) , electromagnetic field , magnetic field , reflection (computer programming) , electrical resistivity and conductivity , peak current , acoustics , electrical engineering , geology , computational physics , meteorology , mathematics , computer science , thunderstorm , engineering , power (physics) , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , pure mathematics , programming language , electrode , electrochemistry
In this paper, we have studied the accuracy of field‐to‐current conversion factors (FCCFs) presented by Baba and Rakov (2007) for currents inferred from electromagnetic field produced by lightning strike to tall objects, considering the perfectly and finitely conducting ground, respectively. For the perfectly conducting ground, the different FCCFs for the initial peak current at the object top, the short‐circuit current peak, the largest peak current at the object top, and the peak current at the object bottom have different accuracy ranging from underestimation of 18% to overestimation of 10% for the reflection coefficients at the two ends of object ρ t = − 0.5 and ρ b = 1.0, and from underestimation of 25% to overestimation of 10% for ρ t = − 0.5 and ρ b = 0.7; and their accuracy decreases with the increase of current risetime RT. For the finite conductivity with 0.01 S/m and 0.001 S/m, FCCFs will cause many errors if we do not take into account the propagation effect along the finitely conducting ground, and their errors obviously increase with the decrease of the conductivity. For example, for ρ t = − 0.5 and ρ b = 1.0, the errors are about 20% when the conductivity is 0.01 S/m while the errors are about 55% when the conductivity is 0.001 S/m for lightning strike to the 168 m high object. Therefore, we revised FCCFs by considering the propagation effect of finite conductivity on the electromagnetic field radiated by lightning strike to tall objects and found that our revised FCCFs have much better accuracy for the lossy ground than that presented by Baba and Rakov (2007).