The Influence of an Additional Substance in the Trenches Surrounding the Grounding Grid´s Conductors on the Grounding Grid´s Performance

In this paper, we present how the finite element method (FEM) can be utilized to analyze the influence of an additional substance in the trenches surrounding the grounding grid´s conductors on the grounding grid´s performance. For this purpose, we modified the preliminarily existent FIELD_GS program code in such a way that the additional substance in the immediate vicinity along the grounding grid´s conductors can be simulated. Different soil structures and various volumes of the additional substance in the soil have been analyzed to prove the suitability of surrounding the grounding grid´s conductors in trenches with the additional substance instead of strewing a whole grounding grid´s surface with the additional substance