Abstract
Fundamental characteristics of a 34-m long horizontal conductor buried at a depth of 1m have been studied with an FDTD method. An equivalent radius of a buried thin wire is shown to be 0.23 times the side of cells employed, which is the same as that of an aerial thin wire. The rate of current dissipating from each section of the buried conductor to the injected current is roughly equal to that of the section length to the total length although it is somewhat influenced by the direction of a current lead. As the conductivity of the ground is higher, the wavefronts of a voltage and a current become less steep. The high permittivity distorts wavefronts of a voltage and a current with their propagation. However, its influence appears only initially and the response at the injection point is little influenced by it. The transient grounding resistance at 5μs calculated by the FDTD method is 10 to 20% lower than the resistance calculated by Sunde’s formula.
