A literature review on use of Bewleys lattice diagram

Brajagopal Datta
Dept. Of Electrical Engineering
North Eastern Regional Institute of Science & Technology
(NERIST), Nirjuli
Arunachal Pradesh, India
brajagopal1989@gmail.com

Abstract Bewleys lattice diagram is a graphical method that

has been widely used for determining value of a wave in transient
analysis. This paper presents an extensive literature survey of
previous publications in which Bewleys lattice diagram has been
used for study of electromagnetic transients, fault location in
distributed systems, calculation of transient fault currents n
voltages in power system networks. From the survey, several
observations can be made, such as on the purpose of analysis
using this method and its advantages over the other methods.
The paper also further discusses about the work done for
computation with digital computer using spreadsheet and
recursive algorithm method. The spreadsheet method is quite
difficult to program using a high level language. The later
method can be easily done with recursive algorithm and further
work needs to be done in this direction.

Keywords Electromagnetic transient program (EMTP), nonuniform transmission lines, Communication Channels,
Broadband power line, Finite difference time domain (FDTD)
method

Dr. Saibal Chatterjee

Dept. Of Electrical Engineering
North Eastern Regional Institute of Science & Technology
(NERIST), Nirjuli
Arunachal Pradesh, India
saibalda@ieee.org

Bewleys lattice diagram is a pictorial method devised by

Bewley, which shows at a glance the position and direction of
motion of every incident, reflected, and transmitted wave on
the system at every instant of time. The diagram overcomes
the difficulty of otherwise keeping track of the multiplicity of
successive reflections at various junctions.
II. TRAVELLING WAVE THEORY
According to TW theory, any disturbance or a sudden change
in an overhead transmission line or underground cable will
generate both forward and backward TWs signals propagating
away from the disturbance point towards both busbars. The
initial values of these waves are dependent on several factors
such as fault position, fault path resistance, fault inception
angle [1], type of fault, etc. Further, these signals will be
reflected and refracted at the points of discontinuity, i.e., fault
point and busbars, until they are attenuated to a negligible
value. The basic principle of this method can be well
explained using Bewley lattice diagram as illustrated in Fig. 1.

I. INTRODUCTION
With the continuous and rapid extension of power networks,
development of automatic and reliable technique for fault
detection and location has recently received considerable
attention. It is well-known that high frequency transient
signals will be generated whenever disturbances occur, where
the power network will lose its steady state condition,
resulting in a large number of cases with load drops. Thus, a
robust and stable fault location technique is required not only
for fast fault clearance to restore electricity supply, but also
the safety of power networks and human life.
During the past decade different kinds of fault location
algorithms either based on the single- or double end
synchronized and unsynchronized measurement methods,
associated with different kinds of analysis techniques such as
WT, neural network, travelling wave (TW), etc. have been
developed. Power quality monitoring under different types of
faults is very important in electrical power generation,
transmission and distribution. Therefore, the detection and
classification of the type of fault must not be neglected.

Fig. 1 Bewleys Lattice Diagram

978-1-4673-1669-9/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

The transient waveform travels towards both the busbar as

shown by the arrows in the figure. While travelling through
the medium they have to incur attenuation due to the medium.
The waves reaches both the busbars after a certain time delay
which is actually equal to the time required by the wave to
travel the distance with speed of 3 x 108 m/s i.e. speed of light.
Upon reaching the busbar, some part of the wave is
transmitted to the other medium and rest is reflected back to
the same medium. The value is decided by the impedance
value of both mediums present on both side of concerned
busbar. The calculation of transmission coefficient and
reflection coefficient has been discussed later in section VI
equation 3 & 4. The same pattern gets repeated when this new
generated waves represented subsequent arrows reaches again
to the busbars.
The generated transient signals consisting of different high
frequency components with information on the type of fault
can be used to locate the fault. Since the main objective in this
investigation is to classify the type of fault based on the
polarity of reflected waves from the point of discontinuity,
details on the methodology used to identify/estimate the fault
location are not discussed. Furthermore, the basic fault
location and calculation method based on the TW has been
well documented in the literature [2]-[5].
Based on the measurements taken at both busbars, S and R
(see Fig. 1), the fault distance (xs) and (xr) can be calculated
using equation (1) and (2) respectively as:

ts t s
2
1 v
2

(1)

tr tr
2
1 v
2

(2)

D. The history of the wave is easily traced. It is possible to

find where it came from and just what other waves went into
its composition.
E. attenuation is included, so that the wave arriving at the far
end of a line corresponds to the value entering multiplied by
the attenuation factor of the line.
The method is arranged to accommodate step waveforms. Any
other waveform is handled by decomposing it into several step
waveforms of different height and with appropriate time delay
between different segments.
With demand of fast fault clearance in continuously
expanding power system came the requirement of ultra-high
speed protection [6]. The research was based on travelling
wave and superimposed components. This literature presents a
new technique for detection of fault using the fault generated
transients. This is known as Positional Protection. It
presents the basic principle of the Positional Protection
techniques. The method has been analyzed by using a model
of a 400 kV EHV transmission system, simulated using EMTP
software.
It was seen that the characteristics of the transient waves
generated due to fault depends upon several factors including;
the fault position on the line, the fault resistance path and the
characteristic impedance of the power conductors. The
propagation was shown graphically using a Bewley-Lattice
diagram as shown in Fig. 2.

t s1 and tr1 are times for incident waves to reach busbar

S and R respectively, ts 2 and tr 2 are the moment the reflected
where

wave from fault point arrive at busbar S and R respectively,

t s1 and tr1 are arrival time for the wave reflected from remote
end busbars, L is the total length of the line and v is the wave
propagation speed.
Bewleys lattice diagram has the following properties:A. all waves travel downhill, because time always increases.

Fig. 2 Bewleys Lattice Diagram for a multi-end transmission

line.

B. the position of any wave at any time can be deduced

directly from the diagram.

The accuracy of fault location in this method is proportional to

sampling rate. Results showed that the scheme was insensitive
to fault type and fault location.

C. the total potential at any point, at any instant of time is the

superposition of all waves which have arrived at that point up
until that instant of time, displaced in position from each other
by intervals equal to the difference in their time of arrival.

Rest of the paper presents a sectionalized summary of the

different works that has been done in previous publications
with this method.

III. IN STUDY OF ELECTROMAGNETIC TRANSIENTS

The main concept of the method lies in considering surge
as it eliminates from a node over a transmission line. The
source of the surge could be due to reflection, refraction, or
due to any switching operation at the node. The reflected
wave will be considered as a new wave travelling over a line
with opposite direction to the original one, whereas the
refracted wave will initiate new waves over all lines
connected to the node. To achieve this, each physical line
connecting two nodes is represented as two oriented lines. The
first one is oriented (i, j) and the second one is oriented (j, i).
Here the first index is the From-node and the second index is
the To-node.
This convention enables this method to handle any system
no matter how complex it may be in same way. The only
requirement is to monitor the surge on a given line till it
reaches the other end. The effect of the generated surges will
then be considered as new surges initiated at that node. The
voltage build-up at any node at a given time is then obtained
by summing up all voltage magnitudes to the desired time at
that node.
IV. FAULT LOCATION IN DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS
Fault location using fault transients and based on traveling
waves theory has been successfully applied as a unit or double
ended scheme on extra high-voltage (EHV) transmission lines
[7]. A single end fault location scheme is also possible when
the current and voltage transients are available at the relaying
point. A single ended fault location scheme has its origin in
Type-A offline traveling-wave fault locators, which, inject a
signal and fault locate from the time it takes the signal to
reflect back from the fault location. It has also been shown
that a single ended fault location scheme is possible using just
the transient fault currents on an EHV system.
Fault transient signals are high frequency signals
superimposed on the steady state voltage and currents. The
transient signals can then be extracted by applying a suitable
high pass filter.
This publication discusses mainly about the two predominant
methods of fault locating i.e. double ended method in which
two fault recorders are used and single ended method where
only one receiver is used for substation. It also presents a brief
field trial on a 23.8 kV distribution system, which is a part of
the power system of Santa Caterana state, in Brazil. This was
accomplished by using two sets of travelling wave fault
recorders on a common circuit that provided both single ended
and double ended.

V. IN BROADBAND POWER-LINE COMMUNICATION

Recently, it has been identified that power-line networks can
be used as an alternative communication system to broadband
service. That is, the medium-voltage (MV), low-voltage (LV),
and indoor-voltage networks can be used as communication
media. Communication through such networks has led to the
investigation of electromagnetic-compatibility (EMC) issues
associated with radiated emissions under normal operating
conditions.
In order to calculate or quantify the radiated field emissions,
spatial and temporal distribution of currents or voltages along
the associated transmission-line (TL) segments, thought of as
a set of distributed radiating electric dipoles oriented in
arbitrary directions (depending on BPLC topology), has to be
known a priori.
In Bewleys methods, the response of TL networks can be
found by accounting for all of the interactions between
forward and backward traveling waves as a result of
discontinuities or disturbances. The method is widely used
and was recommended by researchers like Bergeron [8],
Lowy [9], Schnyder [10], and Chowdhuri [11]. However, in
an extensive or complex BPLC network, the number of
forward and backward waves caused by a single incident
wave increases quickly due to multiple reflections and
refractions.
General expressions for current and voltage distributions at
any point along an interconnected and branched single phase
power line network for EMC analysis have been derived
based on TL theory [12]. These expressions were particularly
useful for calculation of radiated emissions from the PLC
networks. The proposed expressions in this publication were
also verified by EMTP analysis.

VI. IN POWER SYSTEM NETWORKS

The application of the lattice-diagram method to the
calculation, of surges on overhead lines and cables is
described in many books on power systems. In the method,
originally devised by Bewley, lines and cables are specified by
their surge impedances and travel times. The reflected and
refracted voltages and currents at junctions and terminations
of the lines and cables are calculated by the use of reflection
and refraction coefficients KR and KT defined for a singlephase system as

kr =

and,

Re Z c
Re + Z c

(3)

kT =

2 Re
Re + Z c

(4)

Where, Zc is the surge impedance of the line or cable on which

the wave is travelling and Re is the effective surge impedance
seen by the wave when it reaches the junction or termination.
Arbitrary difference precise integration (ADPI) method is
used to calculate the electromagnetic transients in the NonUniform Transmission Lines (NTL) [13]. On comparison with
Finite difference time domain (FDTD) and EMTP methods
that were followed in some other literature, ADPI was seen to
use only 33% of the memory that was required earlier and is
nearly 43 times faster than all FDTD and 19 times faster than
EMTP [14]. The time step size has little influence on
computational accuracy; therefore, a computational efficiency
can be improved more by enlarging the time step properly.
ADPI method is used by author to calculate the
electromagnetic transients in vertical conductors.
Computer assistance in the task of calculations for
electromagnetic transients will be of great help. An approach
has been made for generation of an algorithm that can
compute the transients on a single transmission line [15].
Author has suggested two methods namely Recursive and
Spreadsheet method which can be used for teaching of
electromagnetics for undergraduate students.
As the travelling time of the transient wave will increase,
more number of reflected and transmitted components will be
formed keeping track of which will be difficult. For this
problem the author has suggested a method of recursion. The
algorithm splits the wave into two components i.e. the
reflected part and transmitted part whenever it reaches to a
junction and for computation of each part a recursive call of
the procedure is done. The work has been illustrated with an
example of a 100 V source connected through two lines to a
load. For stopping point of the recursive procedures the
algorithm can be either based on the desired time of
computation of transient waves or convergence of the steady
state values of the waves can be checked.
Spreadsheet method was an easier as compared to the earlier
method. This involves calculation of each component of the
wave using equation (3) and (4) for each junction and
recording the results in tabular form. This was targeted for the
undergraduate students. The weakness of both this method
was inability to handle complex system where numerous lines
are interconnected.

the advantages of this method has been realised. It can be

concluded from this literature survey that utilization of
Bewleys Lattice Diagram method for development of
programming that can be used for fault detection is yet
unexplored. This can be further extended to development of a
program that can be used for analysis of faults in multidimensional transmission systems which has several lines
interconnected with each other. The occurrence of fault in any
of the lines has an effect on the subsequent lines that are in
connection with it. Study for developing such a program is in
progress and will be reported shortly.

REFERENCES
[1]

[2]
[3]

[4]
[5]
[6]

[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

VII. CONCLUSION
The paper provides an extensive survey on the use of
Bewleys lattice diagram method in different fields. Also in
some of the areas a highlight about the comparison of this
method with the other existing methods has been shown and

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