Lightning Induced-damage Characteristics of CFRP Composites under Lightning Arc

This paper investigates the lightning-induced damage behavior of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites under lightning strikes of components B and C through simulated lightning test experiments and multi-physics field simulation. In order to address the shortcoming of the shortcomings of the existing lightning damage analysis for CFRP, which mostly ignores the thermal effect of the attached arc, a finite element model for lightning arc simulation was constructed. The current density and heat flux parameters which represent the thermoelectrical properties of arc can be obtained. Thus, the heating, pyrolysis and degradation behavior of CFRPs under lightning strikes was simulated. The simulation results show that the transient-generated Joule heat plays a major role in the interaction between the intermediate current of lightning component B and the CFRP material, and the damage region shows a significant anisotropy characteristics. The ablation heat transferred from arc shows hysteresis and plays a prominent role in the application of long-duration component C, resulting in a subcircular distribution of damage region. Compared with the thermoelectric simulation, calculation including arc ablation effects can better simulate the damage properties of CFRPs under the impulsive and continuing lightning current components: the additional consideration for arc thermal ablation damage improved the accuracy of simulation predictions of damage area from 35.9% to 75.7%.