There are many problems facing aircraft in the air during flight, such as lightning strikes and ice accumulation on aircraft surfaces. These problems usually reduce aircraft efficiency and lead to serious accidents and fatalities. However, the current protection systems used to solve these problems of aircraft represent excessive energy usage, a hazard to the environment, and they are generally bulky, heavy and costly. Therefore, there are new conductive composites containing an embedded layer of conductive fibers such as graphene and carbon nanotube designed to carry lightning currents, in addition to that, there is a new deicing heater element made of graphene nanoribbons films to be used in ice protection systems. This paper presents a review of some problems facing aircraft in the air, such as lightning and ice accumulation on the surfaces of the aircraft and the significant efforts that have been exerted to address and solve these issues. Also, this paper reviews the contribution of composite materials in reducing the weight of the aircraft and fuel consumption as well as increasing the efficiency of aircraft. This paper also will review the conductive composite materials and its application for aviation, in addition to their contribution to solving the most important problems in aviation.

In this research a reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is used to coat the carbon fiber reinforced epoxy composite (CFRE) to improve and enhance its electrical conductivity that can be used in the aviation applications, because CFRE has poor electrical conductivity, and cannot withstand high electrical current coming from lightning strike. The results show that the electrical conductivity of CFRE is enhanced and increased significantly when it is coated with rGO by about 8015%, where the electrical conductivity of CFRE is increased from 1.38 × 10 3 (S/m) to 1.12 × 10 5 (S/m). Also when the content of rGO increased, the electrical conductivity of CFRE neat will be increased to higher values. The self-heating of all tested specimens was analyzed by the Joule effect. It is found that the self-heating of CFRE is enhanced and improved after coating it with rGO, therefore the self-heating of CFRE become more homogeneous, effective, reaching higher temperatures, than CFRE neat.