Grounding Meshes Encapsulated by Concrete

EasyChair Preprint 11221

Abstract

Although the technique of using concrete to improve grounding is already known in the literature, few studies have evaluated in depth the effectiveness of concrete in grounding meshes with different sizes, as well as which mesh electrodes are more promising for concreting: if horizontal or vertical electrodes (rods). Thus, seeking to contribute to the state of the art, this work presents an original study of concrete encapsulation around grounding mesh electrodes with two different sizes. In addition, situations of partial and total encapsulation of the mesh are studied, investigating several scenarios in order to discover which of them are more promising. More than that, such scenarios were evaluated considering soils with low, medium and high resistivity (300 Ω.m to 4000 Ω.m). In all, 60 simulations were carried out and in each of these situations the grounding resistance values were obtained and the respective percentage reduction calculated in relation to a grid without concrete. As a result, it was observed that, from the point of view of resistance, the best cost-effective concreting situation was for the case in which only the vertical rods of the mesh are fully encapsulated. Finally, it was also observed that concreting is more effective for small meshes and less effective for meshes with a large area.

Keyphrases: Aterramento Encapsulado por Concreto, Malha de Aterramento, Resistência de Aterramento

@booklet{EasyChair:11221,
  author    = {Gabriel V. N. Bezerra and Fernando A. Moreira and Tarso V. Ferreira},
  title     = {Grounding Meshes Encapsulated by Concrete},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 11221},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2023}}