Grounding
YCA Engineering Seminar
December 2001
By Harry Elliott
Why Ground Electrical
Enclosures & Signals?
• Personnel Safety
• Fire Hazard Reduction
• Protection of
Equipment
• Performance
AND Do This In A Manner That
Complies With Codes Such As
• NEC
• Canadian NEC
• ISA 12.6 for Intrinsic
Safety
References:
• National Electrical Code
• Canadian Electrical Code
• IEEE 1100 – 1992, “IEEE Recommended
Practice for powering and Grounding
Sensitive Elective Equipment”
• “Grounding and Shielding Techniques in
Instrumentation” by Ralph Morrison
• Instrumentation Handbook, Bela Liptak
Intrinsic Safety References
• ISA RP-12.6 “Installation of Intrinsically
Safe Instrumentation for Hazardous
(Classified) Locations”
• “Guide to Intrinsic Safety” by Elcon
Instruments
• CENELEC Standards in European
Economic Community
• For Today, Intrinsic Safety is outside scope
Yokogawa References
• Yokogawa Installation Manuals including
TI 33S1J10-01E, CS1000; TI 33G1J10-
01E, Centum CS; & TI34A6A41-01E, uXL
• JIS Standards, referenced in TI’s
• CS3000 R3 I/O Modules GS sheets 9/25/01
GS 33Q06Q40-31, GS 33Q06Q45-31E, and
GS 33Q06Q50-31E
Ground, Ground Plane, Earth
Plane
• Earth Plane: Infinite conducting plane
usually assigned a voltage of zero
• Ground or Ground Plane: Large conductor
or reference element that may or may not be
ohmically connected to earth.
• What is ground on an airplane?
Ground Rod
• A 1 inch rod, 20 feet long will have about 18 ohms
resistance for an earth resistance of 10,000 ohm-
centimeters
• See Wenner Method to Measure Ground
Resistance
• Reduce ohms with many rods, grid, star, salt,
wetting.
• IEEE-1100 suggests 25 ohms for performance
• Safety may require a lower resistance
Resistance to Ground Rod
• Typical number is 1 ohm
• TI 33S1J10-01E uses guidelines of 2 volts
for AC and 1.2 volts for DC
• Note #0 AWG wire has an “impedance” at
1 MHz equal to the DC resistance of #19
gauge wire.
What Have We Seen?
• Do P.C. cards use
single point
grounding?
• NOT TODAY!!
• They use a reference
plane or grid for the
voltage busses
A View Point
• S. J. Simon in his book “Why You Lose at
Bridge” recommends—
• Seek “The Best Possible Result”
• NOT
• “The Best Result Possible”
Common Practices, Good, Bad,
or Ugly?
• Three Grounds in a Cabinet
• (1) Case or Panel Grounding
• (2) System Grounding (for exclusive use
with the nest equipment)
• (3) Shield Ground
Common Practices
• Power Supply & Motor wiring should be shielded,
twisted pairs run separately from signal-carrying wires
• Power ground return-short
• Shield must be tied to a zero-signal reference potential.
Grounding the shield is not effective if the signal is not
grounded.
• Do not assume that an earth ground is a true earth
ground. An extra ground rod may be needed.
• The shield must be connected so its currents drain to
signal-earth connections.
Separator
Power & Signal Cables
Cabling
Ground Loop Current
Magnetic Field
Power Line
Bonded Thermocouple
Unbonded Thermocouple
More Common Practices
• Shielded LAN Cable becomes grounded in
every connection point (both ends of the
cable)
• Therefore, keep ground potential difference
low in the whole network area.
• Keep HUBS (LAN switches, routers) at
exactly the same potential as the rack.
Isolation / Non-Isolation
• Isolated Inputs need an isolation device for each
individual input
• Transformer
• Optical
• Non-Isolated Inputs usually need an isolation
device per unit (Card/Module/Unit)
• Which has a lower cost?
• But T/C’s need isolated Inputs.
