• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
• /
• v.10 no.6
• /
• pp.645-649
• /
• 2007

Ground systems flow fault currents into the ground, and suppress Ground Potential Rise (GPR) by the current. In this paper, we designed and fabricated a surge impedance meter to analyze the ground impedance in wide frequency ranges. The meter consists of a surge generator, a high speed sample/hold (S/H) circuit and an associated electronics. The surge generator produces surge voltage up to 5kV in ranges of $50\sim500ns$. Field tests were carried out to evaluate the surge impedance meter at a driven-rod ground system. The results showed that surge impedance of ground systems should be measured by various fast surge waveforms, since the impedance increases as the rise time of applied voltage increases.