Electromagnetic radiation from lightning return strokes to tall structures

The study of the interaction of lightning electromagnetic fields with electrical systems and the design of appropriate protection strategies are generally based on statistical distributions of the lightning current measured at the channel base using either instrumented towers or artificial initiation of lightning using rockets. Recent studies based both on numerical modeling and experimental observations have shown that the presence of the structure struck by (or used to initiate) lightning does affect the current measurement in a way depending upon the geometry of the structure itself, compromising therefore the reliability of the statistics adopted so far for lightning data. The aim of this thesis is to provide new elements (from both theoretical and experimental investigations) to improve the understanding of the electromagnetic consequences of the impact of lightning return strokes to tall structures. Chapter 2 introduces to the phenomenology of cloud-to-ground lightning and the importance of lightning return-stroke modeling. Among the different classes of return-stroke models existing in the literature, the attention is focused in this thesis on the so-called engineering models, which allow describing the current distribution along the channel as a function of the current at the channel base and the return-stroke speed, two quantities for which data can be obtained experimentally. After presenting a review of five engineering return-stroke models describing lightning strikes to ground, the extension of the engineering models to take into account the presence of an elevated strike object is presented and discussed. The original contributions of this thesis, consisting of both theoretical and experimental works, are presented in Chapters 3 through 6. Chapter 3 is devoted to the computation of the electromagnetic field produced by lightning return strokes to elevated strike objects, using the extension of the engineering models to include an elevated strike object presented in the previous chapter. It is shown, for the first time, that the current distribution associated with these extended models exhibits a discontinuity at the return-stroke wavefront which (although not physically conceivable) needs to be taken into account by an additional term in the equations for the electromagnetic field, the so-called "turn-on" term. A general analytical formula describing the "turn-on" term associated with this discontinuity for various engineering models is derived and simulation results illustrating the effect of the "turn-on" term on the radiated electric and magnetic fields are also presented. In the second part of the chapter, dedicated to the investigation of the propagation effects on lightning electromagnetic field traveling along a finitely-conducting ground, the commonly-used assumption of an idealized perfectly-conducting ground is relaxed in order to analyze, for the first time, how the electromagnetic field radiated by a tower-initiated str