4, APRIL 2007
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Based on finite-element method (FEM) of 1-D conductor element coupled with 3-D soil element, we take into account the frequency
dependent characteristic of the discretized elements to analyze the grounding performance of the substation grounding grids. Compared
with A-V formulation of 3-D FEM, the proposed method can greatly save the CPU time, and the frequency can be considered during
FEM modeling. In comparison with the method of moment (MoM) and the measured results, the presented method is proved to be
correct and effective. Furthermore, we can calculate the H-field generated by the substation grounding grids with both currents in the
underground conductors and leakage currents flowing in the soil. The results show slight difference between FEM and MoM, which can
be explained by the fact that the leakage currents in the soil are not taken into account for MoM.
Index TermsFinite-element method (FEM), frequency domain method, method of moment (MoM), substation grounding grids.
I. INTRODUCTION
HE substation grounding grids provide a common ground
to apparatus and reduce external electromagnetic interference (EMI) to the relay and control equipment. The scale of the
substation grounding grids is enlarged with the increase of the
voltage class. And the safety analysis becomes more important
from the viewpoint of the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC)
in power systems.
Along with the rapid development of computer technology,
the electromagnetic field methods are widely applied to analyze
the grounding performance of the substation grounding grids
[1][4]. The boundary element method (BEM) is introduced for
modeling the grounding grids in [1] and proved to be difficult
for the layered soil. Based on the method of moment (MoM), a
numerical method has been used to analyze the frequency domain characteristic of the substation grounding grids in the layered soil [2], [3]. However, this method is tested to be relatively
complicated for the complex soil [4].
As an effective numerical method, the finite-element method
(FEM) is preliminarily applied for the grounding performance
analysis of the substation grounding grids [5][8]. In order to
consider the effect of the frequency on the grounding performance, the A-V formulations of FEM are used in [5], [6] and
demonstrated to be time-consuming. In [7] and [8], 1-D conductor element is coupled with 3-D soil element during the FEM
modeling. Since the electric scalar potential is adopted to reduce
the computational cost, the frequency is not considered in this
method.
at infinity
on the earth's surface
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
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(10)
Fig. 1. 1-D and 3-D elements.
(5)
where
(11)
where
, and
are the lengths in three directions of the
3-D soil element.
For the two-node line element in the grounding grids region,
the element stiffness matrix is
(12)
(7)
here
(13)
where
, and are the length, the cross section and the conductivity of the 1-D conductor element, and
and
are
the interpolation function of the two-node conductor element
of the first order, electric scalar potential function, and electric
scalar potential of the node, respectively.
In order to solve the above FEM equations, the element stiffness matrices
of the soil element and the conductor element
are required. Then, the total stiffness matrix can be obtained
by integrating all the element stiffness matrices. In this paper,
the truncation boundary (potentials are set to zero) of the domain to be modeled is set to be seven times of the dimension
of the grounding grids to ensure higher accuracy. As shown in
Fig. 1, the 1-D conductor element matches together with one
edge of the 3-D soil element and both elements share the nodes
1 and 2.
For the eight-node brick element in the soil region, the element stiffness matrix is
(8)
where
is the per-unit length (PUL) dc resistance of the 1-D
conductor element.
In order to take the frequency into account during the FEM
modeling, on one hand, both the displacement current and the
conduction current are considered for the soil element, i.e., the
real conductivity
is replaced by the complex conductivity
, where is the permittivity of the soil element. On
the other hand, the PUL impedance
works as the substitute
for the conductor element. For the
for the PUL dc resistance
underground conductor with the radius , the PUL impedance
can be calculated by a closed-form approximation [9]
(14)
here
(15)
(16)
(17)
here
(18)
(9)
where
and
are the PUL internal impedance and the
PUL external impedance, and
and are the conductivity,
the permeability, and the buried depth of the underground
conductor, and
is the soil conductivity, and
is the zero
order Bessels function of the second kind.
It should be noted that the presented method is applicable for
both the voltage exciting source and the current exciting source.
For the current exciting source, the grounding impedance of the
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TABLE II
GROUNDING IMPEDANCES AT DIFFERENT FREQUENCIES
TABLE I
SOIL RESISTIVITY MODEL
Fig. 3. Potential distribution on the earths surface at 30 Hz. (a) Line 1. (b)
Line 2.
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results of FEM are slightly less than that of MoM and fit the
measured results better. 2) For the H-field distribution on the
earths surface, the results of FEM are slightly larger than that
of MoM. These conclusions are consistent with the conclusions
drawn in [6], which is due to the fact that the leakage currents
in the soil are not considered for MoM.
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we present a finite-element method for analyzing the grounding performance of the substation grounding
grids in frequency domain. The advantage of the proposed
method is that the effect of the frequency is taken into account
during the FEM modeling. In comparison with MoM and the
measured results, this method is proved to be correct and effective. Furthermore, combined with the method of nodal analysis
in the circuit theory, the method can be conveniently used for
modeling the grounding system with multiple exciting sources
(e.g., voltage source and current source) and lumped elements
(e.g., resistance, inductance and capacitance) connected.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by Scientific Funds for
Outstanding Young Scientists of China under Grant 50325723,
in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China
under Grant 50577019, and in part by Program for Changjiang
Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University under
Grant IRT0515.
Fig. 6. H-field distribution on the earths surface at 30 Hz. (a) Line 1. (b) Line
2.
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