A hybrid method to represent the soil ionization phenomenon in impulsive grounding systems

This paper presents an extended methodology based on the transmission line modeling method (TLM) to represent soil ionization for the simulation of grounding systems. This natural phenomenon can be better represented by taking into account the variation of the conductive components present in the TLM circuit and considering the residual resistivity remaining in the soil. The proposed analytical formulation is developed with a focus on the computational implementation of the method. The model was validated by comparing the results with measured data and other numerical models (residual resistivity, TLM and analytical models) presenting better results.