IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 46, NO.

8, AUGUST 2010 2955

Effect of Grounding System on Electromagnetic Fields Around Building

Struck by Lightning
Bo Zhang, Jinliang He, Fellow, IEEE, Rong Zeng, and Shuiming Chen
State Key Lab of Power Systems, Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China

In this paper, based on the moment method and the circuit theory, an approach is proposed to analyze the current distribution and
the electromagnetic field of a building struck by lightning. By introducing the concept of complex resistivity in the air and the soil, the
approach can consider the metallic grids under the ground and above the ground altogether. Both the potential differences among the
grounding parts and the electromagnetic interactions among the grids are taken into account. It shows that the resistivity of soil will
affect the electromagnetic field greatly. When the electromagnetic fields around buildings near the lightning struck point are investigated,
or when a building has a separated grounding system, the effect of the grounding systems must be considered.
Index Terms—Buildings, grounding, lightning, moment methods.

I. INTRODUCTION of complex resistivity, which is the combination of the permit-

tivity and the resistivity, is used to solve the fields in the air and
in the soil.

W HEN lightning strikes a building, high current will flow

through the metallic grid and will dissipate into the soil
from the grounding system. This accident will generate strong
transient electromagnetic fields, which may affect the safety of
the electrical and electronic units contained inside the building.
Thus, the computation of the current distribution and the elec-
tromagnetic fields is an interesting and important engineering
problem [1]–[4].
To calculate the current distribution and the electromagnetic
fields of a building, the grounding structure is usually neglected
[1], [2], [4]. In fact, when lightning occurs, the inductance
along the grounding electrode will take effect and the leakage
current will be concentrated around the lightning current in-
jected point [5]. The ground potential will be distributed very
unevenly. Thus, the current distribution and the electromag-
netic fields will be affected by the potential differences among
the grounding points. When the electromagnetic fields around
buildings near the lightning struck point are investigated, or
when a building has a separated grounding system, the effect
of the grounding systems must be considered [3]. Meanwhile,
there are many papers about the lightning performance of a
grounding system [5]–[7], but few of them consider the effect
of the metal structure of a building. Since the building has
many grounding points, the grounding system and the metal
structure above the ground will affect each other. Reference
[8] presented a circuit method to take the building and the
grounding system into account altogether, but it neglected the
impedance of the conductor itself.
In this paper, an approach which can take into account all of
the conductors under the ground and above the ground is pro-
posed to analyze the current distribution and the electromagnetic
field of a building struck by lightning. The approach is based on
the moment method (MoM) and the circuit theory. The concept
Manuscript received December 22, 2009; accepted April 06, 2010. Current
version published July 21, 2010. Corresponding author: B. Zhang (e-mail:
shizbcn@tsinghua.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2010.2048307
0018-9464/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE
II. NUMERICAL APPROACH
To calculate the electromagnetic field around the building
struck by lightning, current distribution on the structure should
be obtained first. This is because the metal structure of a building
and that of the grounding system can be regarded as a filament
structure. MoM is used to calculate the current distribution and
the structure should be divided into short segments first [9].
Since the size of the building is much less than the wavelength
associated with the maximum significant frequency of the light-
ning current waveform, near-field theory can ensure satisfac-
tory numerical accuracy. Based on the concept of complex re-
sistivity, the leakage currents can be introduced not only in the
soil but also in the air. Thus, to set up equations, some assump-
tions of current distribution can be used as follows.
1) Each segment can be considered as a filament.
2) The longitudinal current in the same segment is constant,
which is equal to that at the middle point of the segment.
3) The leakage currents are distributed evenly around the
nodes (the intersections among the segments). Each
leakage current is the algebraic sum of the longitudinal
currents of the segments connected to the corresponding
node. It means that each current leaks evenly from all of
the half segments connected to the node.
Fig. 1 shows the current distribution where and are the
nodes; , , , and are the middle points of the
corresponding segments; and are the leakage currents at
node and node , respectively; , , , and are
the longitudinal currents of the corresponding segments.
In order to make the current from one medium to the other
continuous, at the interface of the media, the conductor should
be divided as shown in Fig. 1(c). To take into account the vertical
electrode of the grounding system, only a half segment should
be left at the end of the electrode (we suppose that the other half
segments do not exist) and the longitudinal current is set to be
zero as shown in Fig. 1(d).
On the surface of each segment, the boundary condition must
be satisfied
(1)
2956 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 46, NO. 8, AUGUST 2010

where is a column vector of leakage currents around the

nodes as shown in Fig. 1, and is a matrix of mutual resistances
between nodes. From the assumptions of the current distribu-
tion, is equal to the potential at node when a unit current
is leaked evenly from all half segments connected to node . For
example, in Fig. 1 can be obtained by

(5)

where is the mutual resistance between node and the

half segment from middle point to node , is the number
of the segments connected to node .
The former two terms of (2) reflect the effect of the longitu-
dinal components of the external electric fields of the segments.
The last terms of (2) reflect the effect of the longitudinal com-
ponents of the internal electric fields of the segments.
According to the longitudinal current and leakage current dis-
tribution in Fig. 1, and have the following relationship:
(6)

Fig. 1. Current distribution on the segments. (a) At the junction of two seg-
ments. (b) At the junction of multisegments. (c) At the interface of the media.
(d) At the end of a electrode.
where is the longitudinal component of the external elec-
tric field caused by both interactions among the longitudinal
currents and the leakage currents from the segments, is the
longitudinal component of the internal electric field caused by
the internal self-resistances. For all segments, by integrating (1)
along the longitudinal direction between their two ends, the fol-
lowing equation will be obtained:
(2)
where is the transpose of . By substituting (6) into (4) and
then into (2), a group of equations is obtained as
(7)
If segment has an injected current , the corresponding
equation can be substituted by . Thus, a group of equa-
tions with longitudinal currents as unknown variables is ob-
tained from which the longitudinal currents can be solved. Then,
the leakage currents can also be solved by (7), and the electro-
magnetic field can be obtained. At each frequency, there is a cor-
responding result. The transient electromagnetic fields around
the multiline structures by near-field lightning strokes can be
analyzed with the help of fast Fourier transform (FFT).

III. COMPLEX RESISTIVITY

where is a matrix of the inductances between segments,
is a column vector of the potentials at the nodes, is a column
vector of the longitudinal currents in the segments, and is a
diagonal matrix of the segments’ internal self-resistances [10].
is a matrix reflecting the connection relationship between seg-
ments and nodes whose entries are
if node is connected to the end of
segment
if node is connected to the head
end of segment
if node is not directly connected to
segment
The entry in can be obtained by [11]
(3)
In order to take into account the metallic grids under the
ground and above the ground altogether, the concept of com-
plex resistivity is used to calculate the mutual resistance in (5),
which is the combination of the permittivity and the resistivity
of the medium
(8)
where and are the resistivity and the permittivity of the
medium. Both the air and the soil have their own complex re-
sistivity. In the air, the permittivity will present the most contri-
bution in (8), and . While in the soil, the resistivity
will present the most contribution, and .
Based on the image theory, Green’s function is used to cal-
culate the mutual resistance in (5) and to calculate the electric
field.

where and are the paths of segment and segment , and
is the distance between the source point and the field point. If
is equal to , is at the axis and is at the surface of segment
. in (2) can be obtained by
(4)
IV. VALIDATION
The results of the approach in this paper were compared with
the published ones of simulated lightning current (1/40 s, 20
kA) fed into the upper corner of a Faraday’s cage shown in Fig. 2
[2]. The cage is constituted by aluminum barrels having a
mm cross section and has a regular mesh.
The lightning current has a vertical channel length of 400 m.
ZHANG et al.: EFFECT OF GROUNDING SYSTEM ON ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS
Fig. 2. Calculated model.
Fig. 3. Profiles of the electric-field attenuation along the line CD.
Fig. 4. Profiles of the magnetic-field attenuation along the line CD.
In Figs. 3 and 4, the attenuation along the line CD produced
by the cage is shown, where the ratios between the EM fields
produced by the lightning with or without the presence of the
cage are reported. In the case of the lightning without the cage,
the lightning channel has been prosecuted until the ground.
used in the figure is the ratio of the maximum electric field with
the cage to that without the cage. is the ratio of the maximum
magnetic field with the cage to that without the cage. In [2], the
soil is considered as a perfect conductor. In this paper, the results
with perfect soil and those with a 1-m depth grounding system
in 100- m soil are presented.
It can be seen that when the soil is considered as a perfect
conductor, the results in this paper are in agreement with those
in [2]. For the electric field, its attenuation along the line CD
almost does not vary with the resistivity of soil. However, for
the magnetic field, its attenuation near D varies greatly with the
resistivity of soil. This may be because the current likes flowing
2957
Fig. 5. A building with several separated grounding systems.
Fig. 6. Magnetic fields of the direct lightning strike.
to a far place through the conductor when the resistivity of soil
is great.
V. APPLICATIONS
The grounding system of the aforementioned model is uni-
form. In this section, the electromagnetic fields in a building
with several separated grounding systems, as shown in Fig. 5,
will be analyzed. Each grounding system is a 2-m-long ver-
tical electrode. The lightning current is 2.6/50 s, 20 kA. The
building is constituted by round copper with a 20-mm radius.
The channel of the lightning is omitted. Point A and point B
are the central points of the corresponding sections. The elec-
tromagnetic fields in the following part are the square roots of
the three orthogonal components.
A. Direct Lightning Strike
First, the electromagnetic fields at point A and point B are
calculated when the lightning current is fed into the upper corner
of the building directly. Figs. 6 and 7 show the electromagnetic
fields at these two points with perfect soil and 100- m soil.
From Figs. 6 and 7, it can be seen that the electric fields and
the magnetic fields are affected by the soil resistivity greatly re-
gardless of where the observation point is. The maximal mag-
netic field is much greater if the soil resistivity is considered.
The maximal electric field near the lightning struck point like
point A is almost not affected by the soil resistivity, but that at
point B is much greater if the soil resistivity is considered. All of
the waveforms of the magnetic fields are almost the same as that
of the lightning current, but the rise times of the electric fields
are shorter than that of the lightning current, especially when the
2958
Fig. 7. Electric fields of the direct lightning strike.
Fig. 8. Magnetic fields of a nearby lightning strike.
soil is regarded as a perfect conductor. The electric fields con-
sidering the soil resistivity increase and decrease much slower
than those with perfect soil.
B. Nearby Lightning Strike
The electromagnetic fields at point A and point B are also
calculated when the same lightning strikes a lightning rod 10 m
away from the building. The lightning rod with a 20-mm radius
is 10 m long and has a vertical grounding electrode of 2-m depth.
Figs. 8 and 9 show the electromagnetic fields at these two points
with perfect soil and 100- m soil.
It can be seen that the magnetic fields are also affected by
the soil resistivity greatly regardless of where the observation
point is. But the electric fields are almost not affected by the soil
resistivity, except for the declining velocity. When the lightning
strikes the lightning rod near the building, the rise times of the
electric fields are much shorter than that of the lightning current.
In summary, when the electromagnetic fields around build-
ings near the lightning strike point are investigated, or when
a building has a separated grounding system, the effect of the
grounding systems must be considered. This may be because
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 46, NO. 8, AUGUST 2010
Fig. 9. Electric fields of a nearby lightning strike.
that the potential differences among the grounding systems
change the current distribution in the metal structure.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, an approach is proposed to analyze the current
distribution and the electromagnetic field of a building struck by
lightning based on the moment method and the circuit theory.
All conductors under the ground and above the ground can be
taken into account. It shows that the soil resistivity affects the
electromagnetic field greatly. The grounding system should be
considered when the electromagnetic fields around the building
by either a direct lightning strike or nearby lightning strike are
analyzed.
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