Evaluation of the lightning performance of grounding electrodes using FDTD-based computational model: Influence of absorbing boundary conditions and representation of the frequency-dependence of soil parameters

This work evaluates the influence of the absorbing boundary conditions (ABC) and the representation of frequency-dependent soil parameters on the assessment of the lightning performance of grounding electrodes using FDTD-based computational model. The results in terms of grounding potential rise (GPR), grounding impulse impedance (Z(P)), and low-frequency grounding resistance (R-LF) showed a better agreement with those calculated by the HEM model when Liao's 3rd order and Convolutional perfect matched layer (CPML) boundary conditions were assumed. The increase of the simulation space contributed to improve the results related to Liao's 2nd order but demanding a longer computation time. Despite the observed improvement, they are still far from those provided by the other ABC. Modeling the soil as a Debye medium to consider frequency-dependent soil parameters leaded to lightning response of grounding electrodes very close to that provided by the HEM model. In terms of Z(P), the largest percentage difference was about 6%. Also, the work indicated that the adoption of 6 poles identified by the MATLAB function invfreqs was enough to represent the frequency-dependence of soil parameters, contributing to decrease the computation time.