Lightning, Plasmas And Aeronautics

These are exciting times for aeronautics. Novel vehicles are projected to conquer our skies, including drones, air-taxis, low emissions, and supersonic aircraft. But getting there will require addressing a myriad of challenges, some related to propulsion technologies and many driven by environmental concerns. Central to all these is aviation’s focus on safety. Plasma technologies and gas discharge physics are well positioned to solve combustion challenges as well as adequately protect these novel vehicles in the Earth’s electrified atmosphere. In this talk I will cover research at the intersection of plasma science and aerospace engineering, including topics related to plasma-assisted combustion and lightning safety. Underlying these applications are principles of gas discharge physics, at largely disparate scales, from km in the atmosphere, to cm in technological applications, which will also be covered including the effects of being airborne. Plasma-assisted combustion is a promising approach to addressing challenging combustion regimes, e.g., ignition of supersonic flows, burning of carbon-free fuels including ammonia, stabilizing lean flames with the objective of reducing emissions, and more. Our work has focused on looking at the two-way coupling of the plasma-combustion interaction, from meso-scale conditions to high power systems, and with an emphasis on studying the impact of the dynamic combustion environment on the plasma regimes encountered. Lightning attachment to aircraft has been investigated for almost a century, and even though lightning risks are not a concern in aviation safety, thanks to strict protection and mitigation measures, lightning protection is as much a science as an art. The state of the practice heavily relies on historical information, experience, and testing: an approach that has worked extremely well while aircraft variations have been incremental but is becoming questionable when looking at the landscape of novel vehicles. To address this need, our work has focused on physics-models for assessment of the lightning threat, as well as innovations for protection and risk reduction.