Chapter 5: Conclusions 53

Chapter - 5

Conclusions
5.1 Conclusions

Rogowski coils, because of their inherent advantages widely employed for the
measurement of fast rising aperiodic current pulses including the lightning impulse
currents. When the demand on the coils sensitivity is high, its bandwidth becomes a
critical issue. The fast rising portion of the impulse currents, which is most important
portion of the waveform, would take the coil to its upper cut-off frequency limits.
This necessitates a detailed study on the performance of Rogowski coils at their upper
cut-off frequency limits.

Distributed transmission line model is employed extensively in the literature to

study the behaviour of coil at higher frequency regime. Only shielded coils with
uniform excitation and a special case of non-uniform excitation are addressed. In a
recent work, the influence of the inter turn series capacitance on the higher frequency
behaviour of the coil has been analysed. Governing equations were derived along with
analytical solution in frequency domain. A ladder network model is shown to be quite
adequate and time domain quantities were deduced with the same.

However, even in the above work, which is most sophisticated, the

electrostatic coupling between the source conductor and the coil is not considered.
Also, a simplified account of coils distributed series inductance is only considered.
The electrostatic coupling between the source conductor and the coil becomes a
serious issue in case of unshielded coils and in case of high sensitive coils closely
fitted into the source conductor. The present work has made an attempt to investigate
the role of this electrostatic coupling on the performance of the Rogowski coil for
both Differentiating Rogowski coil with external integrator and Self Integrating
Rogowski coil under both uniform, as well as, non-uniform excitation.

For the intended study ladder network model incorporating all electromagnetic
and electrostatic coupling along the coil and in addition the electromagnetic and the
electrostatic coupling between the cylindrical source conductor and circular coil is
Chapter 5: Conclusions 54

considered. The inductances in the model were evaluated using the formulae in
Grover [11]. The mutual inductance between the turns was evaluated with the absence
of source conductor. The mutual inductance between the source conductor and coil
was evaluated assuming the current filaments. The capacitances are evaluated using
charge simulation method. Considering all the number of turns of the coil
simultaneously is extremely difficult due to the huge matrix size. In order to have a
practical solution, studies were made with coils of different pitches and radii, as well
as, source conductor of different radii and locations. It is observed from the study that
mutual capacitive couplings for any given turn can be satisfactorily represented by
considering 4 turns on either side. This was then repeated for pertinent number of
sections. Using the values of capacitance and inductance thus derived, a 20 section
circuit model was built.

For a better characterisation of the response, frequency domain studies were

taken up first. In case of DRC with integrator both high terminating resistance (Rt=
10k) and surge impedance termination (Rt=Zo) have been studied. In all the cases
the output response of the coil deviated from the ideal response before the first pole or
zero. This shows that the coil’s performance is reliable below the first pole or zero. In
case of high resistance termination under both uniform and non-uniform excitations,
only poles could be seen for inductive, as well as, capacitive excitation. In contrast to
the above, zeros alone were present for the case of surge impedance termination. This
shows that the surge impedance termination renders superior performance over high
terminating resistance.

In case of SIR coil under uniform excitation, only zeros were present for the
normal inductive excitation, while both poles and zeros could be seen for the
capacitive excitation. This shows that the capacitive coupling between the source
conductor and coil has serious deleterious effects on the coils performance. In case of
non-uniform excitation zeros and poles were present in both inductive and capacitive
excitations. The pole magnitudes were seen to be relatively stronger. This limits usage
of the SIR coil. SIR coils exhibit higher bandwidth in case of uniform inductive
excitation. But in the case of capacitive coupling and non-uniform excitation the
bandwidth is reduced due to the poles of higher magnitude.
Chapter 5: Conclusions 55

The level of influence of capacitive coupling depends on the ground path

impedance or voltage, apart from the geometrical dimensions of the coil and the
source conductor. Therefore the permissible amount of ground path inductance was
deduced for a satisfactory performance (which was arbitrarily fixed by a 2% error).

Subsequently, for a ready quantification of the coils performance, time

domain studies were taken up. In order to have a clear quantification of the
performance, settling time under unit step current was considered. The step response
for the two different types of coils showed some salient characteristics which are
actually time domain replica of the frequency domain response studied earlier.

Rogowski coil with external passive integrator exhibited a response, while

limited by the high frequency bandwidth, did not show any over dependency on the
eccentricity of the source conductor and the capacitive coupling between the source
conductor and the coil.

On the other hand, the self-integrating Rogowski coil exhibited excellent

measurement accuracy for uniform inductive excitation. However, its output is found
to be overly sensitive to the non-uniform excitation and capacitive coupling between
source conductor and the coil (ground impedance not limited to the values deduced in
frequency domain). For these cases, in fact, the step response never showed any
settling tendency even after the permissible time range for the self-integration.

The characteristics of the noise induced in the coil due to coupling to an

external long current carrying conductor parallel to the main conductor for both cases
of electromagnetic and electrostatic coupling have been demonstrated with sample
cases.

In summary, the present work has successfully analysed the performance of

circular Rogowski coils for extended frequencies considering apart from other
relevant parameters, the influence of electrostatic coupling between the cylindrical
source conductor and the coil.
Chapter 5: Conclusions 56

5.2 Scope for future study

The present work has limited the analysis only to a circular coil with
cylindrical current carrying conductor. This needs to be extended to more practical
scenario. Therefore in the future, the performance of close fitting non-circular
Rogowski coils with non-cylindrical current carrying conductors needs to be studied.