Evaluation of the lightning protection system for fighting vehicles

The fighting vehicle is required to perform during the most severe EMI-EMC conditions during the actual service life. Lightning is one of the common natural phenomena which is required to be addressed that can induce dangerously high voltage leading to degradation of performance, malfunction and in some cases failure of equipment or abortion of mission. The systems that are more susceptible to such causes were identified and a lab model was evaluated using a standard lightning impulse generator. The present paper discusses the effect of direct strokes surge immunity (1.2/50 /spl mu/s) on the monopole antenna with gas filled arrestor used in fighting vehicles along with the test results obtained using facilities available at the High Voltage Lab., College of Engg., Anna University, Chennai-25.