The design of a lightning attachment simulator

When lightning strikes an airplane, it generally attaches to a leading edge such as the nose, wing tips, forward part of a vertical tail, or some other leading edge protrusion and leaves via a sharp trailing edge such as the rear wing tip or tail. In order to clearly visualize this phenomena, a lightning attachment simulator was designed and constructed by students at North Dakota State University for the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division. This paper describes the design and development of the simulator.