Concept of a Conducting Composite Material for Lightning Strike Protection

Abstract

The paper focuses on development of a multifunctional material which allows conducting of electrical current and simultaneously holds mechanical properties of a polymeric composite. Such material could be applied for exterior fuselage elements of an aircraft in order to minimize damage occurring during lightning strikes. The concept introduced in this paper is presented from the points of view of various scientific disciplines including materials science, chemistry, structural physics and mechanical engineering with a discussion on results achieved to-date and further plans of research.

Percolation thresholds of 3D all-sided percolation clusters in non-cubic domains

“…Since the polyaniline was assumed as a conducting filler in the developed composite material [15], the numerical model was parametrized for this material. Following the literature data [19,20], R c was assumed to be equal to 1.045·10 -4 mm (see the description of numerical experiments in [21] for more details), and the side length of the domain L was assumed to be equal to 0.01 mm.…”

“…To the best of the author's knowledge, the investigated problem has not been considered previously, and in the recent study it resulted from practical aspects of manufacturing of composite structures with a conducting filler (see [1,15,16]), where the content of a conducting filler needs to be determined in order to obtain a fully conducting composite (i.e. the percolation cluster of a conducting phase needs to be formed).…”

Lightning Strike Protection of Aircraft Composite Structures: Analysis and Comparative Study

“…polymeric composites with metallized reinforcing fibres, dispersed metallic and non-metallic particles). The results of the analysis [10] show that the existing solutions have several drawbacks, e.g. the LSP solutions based on the impregnation of metallic meshes and foils, despite their high effectiveness in LSP, significantly complicate the manufacturing process of such composite structures, and, additionally, increase the mass of an aircraft as the whole fuselage should be covered with a metallic mesh or foil.…”

“…From a variety of LSP solutions one can mention several groups: coatings of metallized sprays or paints, impregnation of metallic meshes and foils as well as solutions based on dispersion of metallic particles, graphite and carbon nanostructures. Detailed overviews of these solutions can be found in [8][9][10]. An alternative approach to LSP of composite structures has been recently developed at the Silesian University of Technology.…”

Synthesis and testing of a conducting polymeric composite material for lightning strike protection applications

“…In order to obtain appropriate content of electrically conductive polymer in the mixture the percolation theory was used, which allows for evaluation of such a content of conducting particles that the whole structure becomes electrically conductive, and simultaneously mechanical properties of a mixture do not decrease significantly. The detailed description of the concept of the composite dedicated for lightning strike protection can be found in [6].…”