Research On Lightning Damage Characteristics Of Carbon Fiber Composite Laminates For Aircraft

The peak value of lightning voltage and current could be as high as several million V and two hundred k A,which is a serious threat to the safe flight of the aircraft.In order to reduce the weight of the aircraft and increase the endurance of the aircraft,composite materials have been widely applied in the design and manufacturing of the airplane.But the conductivity of composite materials is low.Once the aircraft suffered from a lightning strike,the lightning will cause serious damage to the structure of the composites used in aircraft.Lightning damage problem has become a key problem to the large-scale application of composite materials.Firstly,this paper selected the carbon fiber composite materials plate with copper network lightning protection and flame spraying aluminum protection to carry out the lightning current injection experiment.And compare the lightning protection ability of test pieces with two kinds of protection methods.Then the T800/5228 carbon fiber composite materials plate with different conductivity modification is prepared as the test pieces.And the lightning injection test is carried out with the standard lightning current waveform,and the lightning damage of the test pieces with different conductivity modification is observed.Finally,the finite element simulation software ANSYS is used to simulate the lightning damage characteristics of carbon fiber composites with conductive layers and the damage of composite materials with different conductivity and current peak value.The lightning damage influencing factors and damage law of carbon fiber composite was studied by the combination method of thermo-electric coupling simulation and lightning test.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The carbon fiber composite materials plate with flame spraying aluminum lightning protection has better lightning protection ability than that with copper network lightning protection.(2)The protection method of surface conductive film and interlayer conductive film can effectively reduce the damage area of the composite materials and improve the lightning protection ability of the composite materials.(3)The damage area and damage depth of carbon fiber composite increase with the increase of current peak value,and decrease with the increase of the conductivity of carbon fiber composites.Increasing the conductivity of the carbon fiber composite materials in thickness direction can effectively improve the lightning protection ability of the composite materials.