Lightning inductive coupling characteristics of parallel cables: Computation and measurement validation

Abstract

Abstract A simulation model composed of an interfering cable and a disturbed cable is established for studying the lightning inductive characteristics between parallel cables. Effects of the horizontal distance between cables (5–40 cm), their height difference (−6–32 cm), as well as the length of disturbed cable (1–100 m) are investigated for the cable induced voltage, which is measured at the resistive load connected between one terminal of the disturbed cable and the ground, when various lightning surge currents (8/20 μs, 5/320 μs, and 0.5 μs/100 kHz) are delivered into the interfering cable. Our findings show that an increase of horizontal distance between cables can give rise to an exponential decrease of the cable induced voltage, and that there exist linear correlations between either the height difference of two cables or the length of disturbed cable and the cable induced voltage, which reaches maximum when the cables are located at the same height and of equal length. Verification experiments for the effect of horizontal distance have also been made, and, in general, they all show a reasonable agreement with the simulations. A detailed theoretical explanation of obtained findings is provided as well.

Keywords

• cable layout
• inductive coupling
• lightning surge current
• parallel cables