Modelling of the interaction of lightning with structures

This work aims at the description of lightning interaction with structures such as tower buildings, using field simulation methods. The main difficulties in simulating such interactions are the complex physics of the lightning discharge and the range of physical scales relevant to the interaction. The difficulty of collecting detailed, accurate experimental data is closely related to the hostile experimental environment and the statistical nature of lightning. The authors briefly describe the sophistication of different modelling methods and then describe the model used in this paper which is based on the transmission line modelling method. In order to allow sufficient resolution around the lightning channel, mesh grading was used