Nonconventional lighting terminals have been accessed into market one after another, while none of them are well tested for their characteristics of lightning attachment or their effectiveness to eliminate lightning charge. In this paper, we provide a rod-plane laboratorial configuration in terms of mechanisms of lightning attachment. Considering the significant role that leader propagation acts in a lightning attachment process, the leader characteristics are obtained in the laboratorial testing of different lightning terminals. The result turns out that ESE(Early Streamer Emission) terminal acts similar as conventional rod with larger equivalent radius of curvature. Besides, the nonconventional lightning terminals tested have no more effectiveness than conventional terminals.

lightning terminal,laboratorial configuration,ESE,equivalent radius of curvature