Affiliations: [a] Department of Electrical and Communications Engineering, Papua New Guinea University of Technology, Lae, Papua New Guinea | [b] Department of Physical Science, Vavuniya Campus of the University of Jaffna, Vavuniya, Sri Lanka | [c] Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: S.R.H. Hoole, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA. E-mail:[email protected]
Abstract: This work presents a self-consistent and self-contained model to study and
analyse aircraft-lightning electrodynamics. An aircraft-circuit-model-based
estimation of lightning currents is reported when the aircraft is struck by
cloud-to-ground (CG) and ground-to-cloud (GC) lightning flashes. A
distributed transmission line model for the aircraft and the return stroke
channel of the lightning channel is used to simulate the return strokes of
CG and GC flashes. It is observed that a higher magnitude of the rate of
change in currents is produced due to the rapid discharge of electric
charges on the lightning leader channel. Many GC return stroke currents
eventually result in a steady state current along the channel resulting in a
large build up of induced voltage in avionics. It is further observed that
the severity of threat to airborne devices is great in the case of the
initial wave-front of CG return strokes. Previous lightning return stroke
simulation units failed to consider the inclusion of aircraft as part of the
long CG or GC lightning channel, which is crucial when considering the
engineering design of the aircraft body and the protection of internal
electronics where shielding is weakened by weakly shielding aircraft bodies.
We report here for the first time a computer software simulation tool for
studying lightning-aircraft dynamics for engineering analysis and design.
Keywords: Lightning-aircraft dynamics, lightning return stroke, aircraft model transmission line model, aircraft-lightning interaction, frequency spectrum
