Construction and Performance Evaluation of the Artificially Triggered Lightning Experimental Platform for Pipelines

Lightning strike damage to buried steel pipelines poses a significant threat to the safety of energy transportation. Understanding the precise discharge parameters of lightning is essential for researching the mechanisms behind lightning-induced damage to pipelines, which involves the coupling effects of thermal, optical, and electromagnetic interactions. To address the challenges of data acquisition arising from the spatiotemporal randomness of natural lightning, this paper compares the differences between rocket-triggered lightning (RTL) and lightning generator-triggered lightning (LGTL) technologies, based on experiments conducted at the Binzhou Artificially Triggered Lightning Test Site in Shandong Province. The results indicate that RTL effectively simulates key parameters of natural lightning, including discharge polarity, duration (0.3–0.4 s), and current action integral (15,857 A<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup>·s). However, the success rate of RTL is only 29.2%, limiting its ability to provide valid data for analyzing lightning-induced damage to pipelines. In contrast, LGTL demonstrates superior controllability and repeatability, successfully capturing surge voltage and current waveforms on pipelines struck by lightning. These findings provide critical technical support for optimizing lightning protection and enhancing electromagnetic interference resistance in pipelines.