Electric field and electric potential on different concrete grounding system with fly ash and Marconite

A grounding system is the connection of electrical connection to the earth ground by a wire or other conductor. The main purpose of the grounding system is to protect humans, electrical appliances and buildings from electrical shock due to lightning or another form of electricity that hazardous. Therefore, to achieve this goal, the fundamental part must be taken into account. In brief, few grounding systems were modeled using FEM software, which consists of full concrete, three-quarter concrete, half-concrete and a quarter concrete filled with Grounding Enhancement Material (GEM). The GEM used is coal fly ashes and marconite. There are two types of analyses that were carried out which are electric field analysis and electric potential analysis. For the electric field analysis part, the electric field value obtained from all the grounding systems modeled with both GEM (fly ash and marconite) at position top and position bottom was analyzed and compared to evaluate the best grounding system model at both positions. This is because, a lower electric field can provide the lowest impedance path to the ground. However, the result obtained for the grounding system model with marconite is better than the grounding system model with fly ash in terms of the lower electric field. Therefore, for the measured electric field at position top, the results clearly show that full concrete with marconite obtained the lowest electric field value. Meanwhile, for the measured electric field at position bottom, a quarter concrete with marconite is the most suitable grounding system model compared to the other grounding system model. This is because, a quarter concrete grounding system was buried to a specified depth underground and it has the largest surface area in contact with the soil which presents a low resistance electrical path to the earth. Next, for the electric potential analysis part, lightning impulse current using the Heidler model was injected into this software. The Heidler lightning impulse current was injected on all the grounding systems modeled. The finding shows that full concrete obtained the lowest electric potential value followed by three-quarter concrete, half concrete, a quarter concrete and the highest electric potential is the reference grounding system. However, the result obtained for the grounding system model with marconite is better than the grounding system model with fly ash in terms of lower electric potential. This result clearly shows that full concrete with marconite is the most suitable concrete case to withstand the Heidler lightning impulse current compared to the others. In conclusion, the overall result obtained shows that the performance of the grounding system with marconite is better than the groundings system with fly ash in terms of lowered electric field and electric potential value. Therefore, it can be concluded that full concrete with marconite is the best grounding system model to be installed at the grounding site.