Experimental Evaluation of 3D Tortuosity of Long Laboratory Spark Trajectory for Sphere-Sphere and Sphere-Plane Discharges under Lightning and Switching Impulse Voltages

Evaluation of attractive areas of high- and ultra-high voltage power transmission lines to direct lightning strokes is based on modeling of propagating progress of the lightning leader approaching the transmission line. The aim of the modeling is to determine the effectiveness of lightning protection for a given line design. The statistical models are currently being developed to extend the conventional deterministic models by embracing the randomness of the discharge channel in space and hence to reproduce the statistical distribution of the striking points. These models require experimental data for understanding of the lightning leader development process and to validate the model across the measurement data. This paper reports on the measured trajectories of discharge channels of long laboratory sparks in various high voltage laboratory arrangements. The sparks were initiated by switching and lightning impulses with peak values ranging from 1200 kV to 3364 kV of positive and negative polarity for two types of high-voltage electrode systems (sphere-sphere and sphere-plane), arranged at distances of 3.3 m and 5.5 m from each other. Statistical distributions of angles describing trajectory of discharge channels in space are reported for a total number of 540 recorded discharges. The results can serve as reference measurement data to develop and evaluate the accuracy of simulation models incorporating statistical nature of the lightning leader development process.