A hybrid method for calculating the inductive interference caused by faulted power lines to nearby buried pipelines

The interference of power transmission lines to nearby buried pipelines has been a research subject for many years. Especially during fault conditions, large currents and voltages are induced on the pipelines, which may pose a threat to operating personnel and equipment. In this work, a new hybrid method employing finite element calculations and standard circuit analysis is discussed that may be used in order to calculate the induced voltages and currents on a pipeline running in parallel to a faulted line. Nonparallel exposures are converted to parallel ones and dealt with similarly. The fault is assumed to be a single earth-to-ground one and outside the exposure, so that only inductive interference is considered. A specific case taken from literature is used to validate the proposed method. The results obtained are in good agreement with previously published ones. Important parameters such as the earth resistivity, location of grounding and pipeline coating resistance are evaluated, producing graphs that may be useful to engineers.