Transient plane wave coupling to bare and insulated cables buried in a lossy half-space

The current induced on an infinite bare or insulated cable buried in a lossy earth medium due to a transient plane wave is presented. An exact solution is formulated in the frequency domain using a spatial transform under the thin-wire approximation. The widely used equivalent circuit transmission line model is derived from the exact solution. Results are presented for typical transmission structures under high frequency transient excitation and the exact solution is compared with the transmission line approximation. The transmission line approach provides good results for a wide range of cases. For accurate results in the high frequency situation it is necessary that the correct incident field expressions be used and that a complete representation of the earth´s electrical properties (σ and ε) be retained