Lightning Damage

A lightning strike can have particularly serious consequences for buildings and structures due to their location, type of construction or the use for the building and structure. A nursery school, for example, is a building where a lightning strike can have serious consequences to when a building is strike and don’t have a proper lightning protection system.

In order to comply with the requirements of the SANS / IEC Code 62305 series of standards, the lightning protection components must be manufactured and tested as per specified requirements in the SANS / IEC 62561 standard series. The ongoing miniaturization of electrical components requires innovative lightning protection measures to ensure that the electronic systems are adequately protected.

In order to provide adequate lightning protection for such systems, a scientific approach is required. Various calculations are needed to assess what type of protection is needed. Typically, the lightning protection level must be calculated by means of the Lightning Protection system risk assessment and thereafter the air termination, down conductor and earth termination systems are designed. It is also vital that the required separation distances are calculated and applied to the Lightning Protection system.

Maintenance of a Lightning Protection system is important even though the LPS designer has taken special precautions to provide corrosion protection and has dimensioned the LPS components according to their particular exposure to lightning damage and weather elements in addition to the requirements of this standard. If an inspection shows that repairs are necessary, those repairs should be executed without delay and not be postponed until the next maintenance cycle.

The use of the concrete steel reinforcing enhances the current division of the lightning current in the case of a direct strike and it also enabled us to raise the zero-potential point from ground level to roof level making the lightning protection design more effective.