The SESImpedance software is a powerful application that computes the internal impedance per unit length of long conductors of constant cross-section, with arbitrary geometry and composition.

The program uses the Finite Element Method (FEM) to calculate the electrical characteristics of conductors and can handle conductors of arbitrary shapes and realistic materials. The calculations fully account for skin effect, and can be carried out at low or high frequency.

Examples of conductors that can be modeled using SESImpedance include:

• Conductors made of different materials (such as ACSR) possibly including insulating material (e.g. OPGW).
• Conductors comprising many sub-conductors, such as stranded conductors.
• Conductors of non-circular shapes, e.g. elliptical conductors or rail tracks.

SESImpedance is highly interactive and visual. Once you have defined the geometry and electrical characteristics of the various parts of the conductor and specified the necessary computation parameters, SESImpedance reports the processing steps generated by the FEM solver and indicates the main results; i.e. the internal Resistance and Reactance of the conductor.

The program also computes and reports the characteristics of an equivalent conductor of circular cross-section that has the same internal impedance as the specified conductor, making it possible to directly use the results of SESImpedance in applications that are restricted to circular conductors. Several options are available to define the radius of this Equivalent Circular Conductor.

In SESImpedance, the geometry and electrical characteristics of conductors is defined as a list of parts which are simple geometrical shapes (triangles, circles, etc…) with well-defined (typically uniform) resistivity, permeability and permittivity. Conductors of arbitrary shape and non-uniform electrical characteristics can be built by combining simple parts of different shapes and characteristics.

SESImpedance uses an object-oriented approach to describe the geometry of the conductor that allows you to quickly select, transform, duplicate and delete the parts.

In order to draw a part, simply click anywhere in the graphical area to define the starting point and move the mouse pointer to define the size of the part. The geometrical characteristics of a part can easily be modified using a flexible Properties window.

CAD operations, such as moving, rotating and scaling a selected part are typical functionalities that will help you quickly generate the conductor to analyze. You can also interact with the view of the conductor using the mouse to pan or zoom in and out on any area of interest.

SESImpedance includes an extensible material database, which allows you to easily assign or change the material type of a given object or to store your own material type for future use.

SESImpedance offers the possibility to import geometries created with SESCAD and saved as a MALZ session file. It also allows you to import existing SESImpedance models, making it possible to build a library of reusable conductor components.