volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

The major objective of the study was to assess the safety of electric line workers exposed to of a double circuit 132 kV transmission line for different scenarios. The double circuit 132-kV, 60 Hz transmission line has a power rating of 293 MVA and a maximum recorded peak load current of 603 A. The charge simulation and the Biot Savart methods were used by EPRI workstation software to compute the external electric and magnetic fields around a 132 KV transmission line. We used the calculated external electric and magnetic field exposures to determine the induced electric field and induced current densities inside the human body. This was performed using the Finite Difference Time Difference computational algorithm in EMPIRE commercial software, with a 6 mm voxel resolution. We used the Visible Human (VH) to investigate the internal induced electric field and circulating current densities in more than 40 different tissues and organs of the VH. We found that the worker exposure levels to extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields are below the recommended IEEE international standards limits for the studied scenarios. In all scenarios the maximum induced current densities and electric fields were in the bone marrow of the feet.

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Dr. Nabil M. Maalej

Dr. C. Belhadj