New Approach to Revise the Spatiotemporal Lightning Current Distribution Models Intended for Tall Objects

In this article, we revised the commonly known engineering return stroke models for elevated objects, by taking into account the relativistic Doppler effect of the return stroke velocity shift. This revised model is applied to calculate the electromagnetic lightning field, struck by the Peissenberg tower using the finite difference time domain method in two-dimensions method. The simulation results are both compared with the results of the experimental measurements and with those obtained from the only two theoretical extending models existing in the literature that consider the presence of towers. Results show that the vertical lightning electric field is in perfect agreement with that measured experimentally, which means that this novel model was able to eliminate the nonphysical aspect of the transmitted current wave velocity from the tower top to the lightning channel observed in the hypothesis of the other authors and to reproduce in a more refined way the experimental measured electric field. The magnetic field behavior presents a concordance in the first peak and a slight difference in the tail waveform with that measured experimentally. These new formulations approximate the reality of the lightning radiation and, thus, allow to improve protection against its harmful effects.