Lightning Protection System Design

Include a subterranean walkway in your scheme.

Hire an electrical engineer knowledgeable in lightning protection. I recommend you hire a local engineer to the installation. They should be able to tell how much of a concern an direct strike will be versus the more likely induced strike effects.

The alternative is that you should first go to a good school for electrical engineering. Then work for a company that works in power distribution work for a few years. Power distribution deals with the impact of lightning most of the time. Become an apprentice to the engineer in charge of lightning protection design. Then if you are very observant you may be asked to demonstrate your acquired skills in design.

As has been recommended, consult a lightning protection expert. One thing they will probably suggest is to put some sort of sheet metal roof over it. Even a wire screen will work as long as it's periodically grounded using grounding straps (not wire or copper rope) as lightning contains mostly high-frequency components which tend to travel on the surface of conductors rather than in the conductors' interior. Wide flat copper straps make for much better lightning conductors. Insist that your consultant use them to ground the lightning rods rather than copper rope or rod. You want as much conductor surface area as practical.

Use a pencil and paper to write it all down.

lightning rod (masts) has been used traditionally, but it will cover an area using conical shape only. Here, we are talking about a length wise walkaway area of 320 m. Or, we can install ground wire using towers of suitable height, as used in substations.

Of course, we have to earth it effectively, but first we are concerned about lightning proection schemes that will be best suited for the purpose.

Regards,

appears, we can also give a faraday cage - to protect everything in the walkway. We are talking about 400 volts motor systems.

Regards,

Installing protection on an undefined "320 m long walkway consisting of many equipments like motors etc" should be left to a professional who can look at the plans, visit the site, and make informed decisions as to the protection.

Of course, this will cost money.

Certainly one way to trim November's beard. The trick is to get the sparks to distribute evenly whilst dialing 911.

Prepare a scaled drawing,mark all materials used,content of building(motors, electronics etc their location)show it to an experienced consultant,ask him to visit your premises and prepare a report and quotation.

Nice one lyn

Here you go. I GOOGLED "Lightning rod photos" and now I'm a Lightning Strike Avoidance Engineering Consulting Expert. Just kidding. Here is a good start, however, if you design, fabricate and install a system yourself, you are assuming ALL responsibility and liability for any damage done when the lightning strikes your system and explodes in a ball of fire and kills someone.

Hire an engineering firm to design it!

Have you considered a well grounded steel frame with corrugated steel roofing? but best to seek expert guidance.

As most of above posts recommend it will be better to hire a specialist in this field. The Lightning Protection it is not a course but a profession. For your general information you can study IEC 62305

http://www.serec.ethz.ch/EVENTS%20WEF%202011/LIGHTNING_14OCT11/5_The%20IEC%20EN62305%20Standard_BOUQUEGNEAU.pdf

and IEC 61024-1-1.

Also NFPA 780 and UL 1449/1998?

IEEE Std 998™-2012

and so on.