Estimating Aircraft Lightning Strike Severity Distributions for Geographic Location and Operational Behaviour

Lightning Strikes are a well known hazard to aircraft and considerable data has been gathered regarding their probability and severity; much of which concerns aircraft behaving in a particular manner. Estimating the probability and severity of lightning strikes to aircraft behaving in the same manner should be straightforward, but the same analysis may not accurately estimate the probability and severity of lightning strikes to aircraft that follow different operating procedures. BAE Systems are concerned with various types of aircraft; operating at various speeds, altitudes and orientations; at any time of the day or night; in any season and at any global location. There is therefore a requirement to estimate the probability and severity of lightning strikes to aircraft in the general case. A Previous study [1] proposed a way to estimate the probability of lightning strikes to aircraft: At any geographic location; Flying at any height & speed. This study follows on from [1] taking information from a variety of sources and attempts to estimate the severity distributions of lightning strikes to aircraft under the same conditions. These lightning strike severity distributions can be used to illustrate the trade-off between lightning avoidance and lightning protection requirements for an aircraft with a given operating pattern (flight speed, altitude & geographic location). This trade-off is informed by estimates of the lightning strike avoidance levels achieved by current and historic aircraft; which can also be produced using this method.