FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELDS GENERATED BY ATMOSPHERIC DISCHARGES

Abstract

A lightning return stroke channel is modeled by a high loss transmission line. The differential equations that represent its dynamic behavior are solved by the application of the one-dimensional finite element method (FEM). By the combination of FEM results with the use of Maxwell equations applied to the dipole method, electric and magnetic (EM) fields are evaluated at various positions in space. [Vol. 12, No. 1 (1997), Special Issue on International Computational Electromagnetics, pp 34-38]