Analysis of Grounding Systems in the Vicinity of Hemispheroidal Heterogeneities

This paper presents a method of analysis of grounding systems located inside or near a hemi-oblate spheroidal soil heterogeneity. This type of soil is particularly useful for modeling grounding grids close to certain types of finite inhomogeneities, such as lakes or some types of backfill materials. The developed analytical framework is based on a moment method and involves solving Poisson's equation in an oblate spheroidal coordinate system. Computation results obtained using this modeling approach for several electrodes and hemispheroidal geometries are compared with those obtained using other numerical and analytical techniques. In all cases, good agreement has been achieved.