Lightning flashover test on pipeline: Effect to conducting material

It is generally known that power system outages caused by lightning flashover present a serious engineering problem. Most of the industrial company take serious action in order to protect their equipment from damage by natural causes such as lightning. It will be the necessary precautions to keep the lightning channel far away from the immediate neighbourhood of flammable and explosive materials. Protection of electric equipment against this power of nature is one objective of high voltage engineering and testing. The aim of this study is to investigate flashover in gap between industrial pipeline and any conducting material around the pipe. Impulse voltage test are used to simulate the lightning and tested on prototype of pipeline. The influence of the spark gap discharge on the statistics of the air breakdown processes has been investigated in a wide range of gap lengths from 1.0cm to 3.0cm under impulse conditions. The results were discussed base on its breakdown voltage affected by the length of the gap.