New Insights Into Calculations of AC Interference at Fundamental and Harmonic Frequencies Taking Account of the Phase Relationships of the Currents

Electromagnetic interference to pipelines and railways from AC sources has long been a cause for concern. Methods and standards have evolved to enable calculations of the voltages produced under different conditions. These take into account the AC frequency, the soil resistivity and the pipeline characteristics. However, the approximations presented in some standards fail to take into account the phase relationship of the currents in the AC conductors and how that affects the induced currents in the earth. This paper re-examines these issues by introducing a revised complex image method for 3-phase systems that provides a simple and accurate way to include the influence of induced currents in calculations of the induced emf in nearby conductors. Normal positive sequence 3-phase currents produce fields in neighbouring conductors that tend to cancel. For the associated image currents in the earth, the cancellation is so complete that they have no influence on the induced emf. A different situation occurs with the zero sequence currents that occur during fault conditions and triplen harmonics. These currents are in phase, so there is none of the cancelling effect and the contributions from each conductor add to give a larger induced emf in a neighbouring conductor.