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A variation of the treatment theme is the availability of several types of specialized ground rods that may be filled with ionic
solutions, or may extract atmospheric moisture and leach it into the soil. These products are available from manufacturers of
grounding materials.
What is the difference between "resistance" and "resistivity"?
Although these terms sound almost alike, don't confuse them. They have very different meainings. The efficiency of a
buried electrode (rod, grid, plate, parallel ground field, etc.) is evaluated in terms of resistance. This is a measure of how
well the electrode can disperse current into the surrounding soil. The independent electrical properties of the soil itself,
however, are described in terms of resistivity. If you are making a resistance measurement, you are testing a particular
installed ground. If making a resistivity measurement, you are testing the soil itself.
Resistance is measured in Ohms; resistivity is commonly given in units of Ohm-centimeters, although for convenience
other units, such as Ohm-feet, can sometimes be used. The resistivity of the local soil combined with the configuration of
the electrode make up the resistance which that particular electrode experiences. In field practice, resistivity measurement
is frequently done first, in order to locate a good site for a ground and to theoretically calculate its optimum design. Then
resistance testing is done second, to verify that the design has in fact met the requirement.
Fall of Potential has been devised as a means of verifying that the true volumetric measurement has been attained.
Otherwise, readings may vary depending only on where the voltage probe is placed. To understand the relationship that
underlies this, it can be visualized that a fault current being carried to ground by the protective system will at first encounter
a resistance from the surrounding soil. But the current in this case is not restricted to a single path, as in a wire. It can, and
does, spread out 360 º around the ground electrode. But at a certain distance, depending on local soil conditions, the
"freedom to wander" has become essentially infinite; that is to say, once away from the immediate environment of the
electrode, the earth becomes so vast as to offer only a negligible added resistance. So it is the effect of the immediate
environment, up to its maximum, that must be measured. Readings made too close to the tested ground will be artificially
low, and impart a false sense of the ground's adequacy. By observing where it maxes out on the graph, one can be certain
that the correct value has been determined. [In addition, the current path becomes constricted again in the vicinity of the
current probe producing the second rising curve on the typical graph. In a real life situation, of course, this second rise
does not exist. A lightning strike, for instance, can disperse throughout the earth. The second rise observed on a Fall of
Potential graph is an artificially imposed condition of the test procedure, deriving from the necessity of introducing a test
current.]
Fall of Potential is a thoroughly reliable procedure, as the correct reading can be observed from the graph. Its limitation is
that it takes time to record all the required values and construct the graph. To speed testing without losing reliability, any
number of specialized procedures have been developed. But if they are recognized by respected organizations like IEEE,
they are derived from the basic concept of Fall of Potential. In these alternate methods, mathematics are substituted in
place of graphic observation as the means of distinguishing between acceptable and bad tests. In Fall of Potential, if
insufficient probe spacing has been used it will be directly observable from the graph: there will be no flat area from which to
take the reading. Simplified methods use mathematical tests instead. Brief calculations are required and these throw out
bad tests by not yielding coherent results. Mathematical tests are simplifications of calculus taking advantage of the rate of
change of slope. The necessity for using one or another of these procedures is to have an objective way of knowing that
the resistance measured as the test result is the maximum resistance that a fault current will encounter, not some lesser
value taken off some other point on the Fall of Potential curve.