A Macroscopic Inception Criterion for the Upward Leaders of Natural Lightning

Kumar, Udaya and Bokka, Prasanth Kumar and Padhi, Jagannath (2005) A Macroscopic Inception Criterion for the Upward Leaders of Natural Lightning. In: IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, 20 (2). pp. 904-911.

Preview

PDF 01413332.pdf Download (246kB)

Abstract

The increased use of electronic equipments in day-to-day life as well as the steady increase in the height of the structures have considerably increased the lightning threat. As a result, a suitable lightning protection system has become very essential. For a reliable evaluation of the protection efficacy the process involved with the final bridging needs to be accurately ascertained. This requires tracing of the inception as well as the propagation of the upward connecting leaders from both the protection system as well as the structure being protected. Owing to the complexity of the problem, only the macroscopic models seem to be practical. As a first step in this direction, the present work has developed a model capable of ascertaining the inception of the upward leaders from both the air termination network as well as the structure itself. In this, the discharge activities around the prospective inception regions are represented by a corona envelope, which is followed by a streamer. Using the works based on the long air-gap switching surge breakdown experiments it is shown that the streamer in the model must attain a critical length for the inception of a leader. This critical length is shown to be sensibly independent of gap-geometry and the electrode radii when varied below the critical radii. The applicability and the stability of the model is demonstrated with a few salient examples.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery
Publisher:	IEEE
Additional Information:	�©2005 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.
Keywords:	connecting leaders;leader inception;lightning protection;upward discharges
Department/Centre:	Division of Electrical Sciences > High Voltage Engineering (merged with EE)
Date Deposited:	05 Aug 2005
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 04:19
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/3454

Actions (login required)

View Item