Electric behavior of conductor systems embedded in finite inhomogeneous volumes scattered into a multilayered soil: The problem of High-Resistivity Ratios revisited

The problem of finding the absolute potential and grounding resistance of an electrode system in a multilayered soil is dealt in this paper. Some of the electrodes may be embedded in finite inhomogeneous volumes scattered into the soil. Furthermore, the electrodes may or may not be interconnected. A semi-analytic method is proposed, which is applied to the study of the electrical properties of a ground electrode connected to a metallic grid which is embedded into a cubic volume made of concrete. This volume may be buried in the soil or lying above the ground surface. The problem of high resistivity ratios between the volume and the surroundings is addressed. The paper focuses on the ill-conditioning of the system impedance matrix, resulting in inaccurate numerical solutions of the problem. A procedure will be suggested in order to obtain acceptable solutions in some cases, without increasing the computational cost. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.