A Transmission Line Modeling (TLM) Algorithm to Evaluate Grounding Grids Including Soil Ionization

The paper proposes an innovative numerical model-based on Transmission Line Modeling method (TLM) for the representation of ground meshes including the nonlinear soil disruption phenomenon. In the presented model, the soil ionization is represented by the temporal change of conductive components taking into account the residual resistivity retained in the ionized region. Simulations are performed for a ground mat submitted to an impulsive surge. Comparisons with the state-of-the-art solutions are presented and demonstrate that the proposed technique is appropriate for representation of elaborated grounding grids, resulting in a faithfully and more accurate numerical model. Ease of implementation without hard-to-design parameters, highlight the model attributes for practical purpose.