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IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation
Volume 48 Number 9, September 2000

Table of Contents for this issue

Complete paper in PDF format

Rise Times of Impulsive High-Current Processes in Cloud-to-Ground Lightning

John C. Willett and E. Philip Krider Member, IEEE

Page 1442.

Abstract:

Measurements are presented of electric-field derivative ( dE/dt) waveforms that were radiated by first and subsequent return strokes, stepped, and dart-stepped-leader steps just before return strokes and"characteristic pulses"in normal (negative) cloud-to-ground lightning under conditions of minimal distortion due to ground-wave propagation. The main dE/dt peaks produced by the fast-rising portions of all of these processes are found to have similar durations [mean full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) ranging from 79 ± 20 ns for subsequent strokes to 54 ± 17 ns for stepped-leader steps], although widely differing absolute magnitudes (spanning nearly a factor of four). Field-change (E) signatures of first strokes are examined in greater detail after eliminating the 39% of events with multiple dE/dt peaks during their fast-rising portions. The"slow fronts"beginning these waveforms had durations of 3.7 ± 1.2 µs and amplitudes 50% ± 10% of peak E. The latter ratio was uncorrelated with either peak E or peak dE/dt. The range-normalized peak magnitudes of the remaining fast-rising portions of these field changes were well correlated with those of the corresponding dE/dt signatures, whereas the values of FWHM of dE/dt were uncorrelated with peak dE/dt and only poorly correlated with peak E.

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