CAE Modeling And Property Researching Of Composite Laminate Lightning Strike Protection Applied To Light Aircraft

Carbon fiber reinforced polymers have advantage of high specific strength and modulus as well as low density, anti-corrosion, and superior structural designability so that it has been widely used in aviation and aerospace industry, espcially in civil aviation, proportion of composite materials applied increasing rapidly. Statistical data shows that there is a risk being struck every 3000 flight hours when civil planes are in normal operation or higher than that in frequent thunderstorm areas. Elctric conductivity of composite materials is lower than metallic materials and it would caused more heavily damage than traditional planes that consist of metal framework if without lightning strike protective measures. Therefore, lightning strike protection of new type planes which made by plenty of composite materials is a vital problem for aviation safty operation.The paper introduces an experimental scheme which is used for researching the lightning strike actual damage extent with the protection of designed protective measures. Laminated structure and computational models were built by CATIA and ANSYS before carry out the "electric-thermal-structure" coupling analysis in order to study the impact of lightning strike on CFRP laminate. Furthermore, the passage obtain the graphs of temperature distribution, total or lamina deformation, and equivalent stress stimulated by quantity of heat with the help of postprocessing function integrated in ANSYS Workbench.The composite laminates are prepared by means of resin transfer modelding taking T300 as reinforcement while the matrix is modified epoxide resin DR331 and conduct an artificial lightning strike test in a same conditons for the spicemens. We designed a kind of rapid fixture in order to avoid potential safty hazard dur to spicemens being blowed up. In addition, the paper conjectures the reason of laminates carbonized, fiber breakage or delamination. Eventually, the paper summarizes the conclusions drawed from experiment and finite element analysis, which also predicts the future development orientation of lightning strike protection.