Modelling and Simulation of the Mechanical Effects of a Lightning Discharge to Aircraft Carbon Fibre-Reinforced Polymer Structures

This work compares the implementation of the analytical strong shock wave approximation to represent the supersonic expansion of the hot plasma channel with the solution obtained from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) when simulating the mechanical damage induced by lightning strikes in protected composite structures. The assessment of the pressure profiles and the numerical predictions of the velocity of previously validated test cases, for two lightning strike protection layers, suggest that the strong shock wave approximation is able to provide a reasonably good description of the effects of the supersonic plasma expansion loads.