Objectives:

1. Measuring earth resistance. 2. Understanding installation of earth for building using fall of potential method. 3. To know different elements that affect earth resistance like: soil resistively, earthing rod cross sectional area and conductor material.

Equipment:
1. 2. 3. 4. Digital earth resistance tester Earthing rods Auxiliary earth associated with tester Cables associated with tester

Theoretical background:
Ground, in electricity, connection in an electrical circuit that leads to the earth or to a large conducting object (such as the metal frame of an airplane) that is at zero potential with respect to the rest of the circuit. In every type of electrical system or device, accessible metal parts, such as frames, cases, and switches, are usually maintained at ground potential. If this precaution is not observed, a failure of insulation or some other accident may put part of the system at a potential different from that of the ground, creating a shock hazard. Measuring earth resistance is an important aspect in electrical installations. We will use fall of potential method to measure it. By passing current I through earthing plate X and electrode Z which is far away from X, and then inserting another electrode Y between X and Z we are able to find earth resistance using the relation: Potential difference between X and Y RX = Current I This is done easily by using DEIT for our measurements.

Procedure:

For each electrode we fitted the auxiliary rods to the ground to be measured as figure below. 2. Using suitable-length cables we connected the rods X, Y and Z to their corresponding terminals of the tester 3. We select the range of ohms and turn the power on of the tester. 4. for each distance between X and Y we pushed the control button to read the resistance and turn the tester OFF 5. As shown in the following table resistance is taken in straightline direction. 6. We changed the direction of our measurements to see the effect of different soil locations and filled second row in the table. 7. We joined the two earthing electrodes and repeated the above steps and filled third row.
1.

Earthing plate

Distance of Y from X (m)

0
85 80 60

0.5
120 150 115

1
125 165 118

1.5
140 163 109

2
145 156 102

3
150 180 153

5
146 185 159

10
170 176 162

12
900 880 700

X1

RX() RX() RX ()

X2 X1/X2

Result and discussion:

Q 1&2) -theoretical values

- experimental values
350 300 250 Resistance (ohm) 200 150 100 50 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 D istance (m) X1 X2 X1/X2

as we see from the graph of the experimental values and compared to the graph of measured values we find that the two graphs are the same but the experimental didnt start from the zero because there is no zero distance and we find that the small diameter electrode gave a high resistance and using the big electrode diameter in parallel with a small diameter electrode reduce the resistance of the earth effectively. In the middle of the curve we find the true value of the earth resistance and it's increased and decreased at the start or at the end. Q3) We can reduce the earth resistance by changing the diameter of the electrodes or by connecting a new electrode in parallel.

Q4) Yea it was a good material, but it has a high resistance so we have to add a chemical materials and conductive material to be more suitable to measuring the earth resistance because this materials decrease the earth resistance Q5) The maximum value of the earth resistance in Jordan about 5 ohm's it mustnt be more than this value, but it will change from region to other due to the temperature and moisture

Conclusion:
the most important thing for knowing the earth resistance and find it is to protect the users when they using the electrical machines the earth resistance must be as small as it can because the currents move across the low resistance we have to take in the account the variables that affect in the earth resistance to measure the accurate value of the resistance

UNIVERSITY OF JORDAN FACULTY OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY MEASUREMENTS and CONTROL LAB. 0908448 EXPERIMENT N0. 3

Group Names: 1. Ahmad Al-Mashayekh.(0052904). 2. Anas Al-Hamad.( ). 3. Ramzi Al-Assaf. ( ). 4. Ahmad Abu-Hasham. ( ). Section: (2-5)/(SUN). Date: 25/10/2009.