Lightning Strike Material

By : Awaneer

I saw yahoo news about an A380 cached a lightning strike. Cool picture. Actually in aerospace technology the treat of lightning is very well known. So, some of the structure especially composite nowadays need to be protected by lightning strike materials like bronze mesh and aluminum mesh.

If we don't have these, the composite material might burst, burnt or explode because it doesn't have any capability to transfer the huge energy from the lightning to somewhere else. The crucial structure that need this protection is fan cowl which cover the engine parts. If this blows up you know what engine+fuel is capable of!

Let's see the video :



By Gaby Leslie, Yahoo! UK

A man was lucky enough to capture this footage of two bolts of lightning striking an airplane minutes before it landed at Heathrow airport.

All five hundred passengers on-board the Emirates Airbus A380 escaped unharmed after two powerful lightning bolts hit the aircraft in a thunderstorm.

During the four-second-long video, the powerful lightning strikes can be seen touching the body of the aircraft from all sides.

The awesome moment was captured by photographer Chris Dawson in south west London over the warm Easter weekend last month.

The plane was left completely intact following the incident.

"I saw the storm clouds gathering and I thought the conditions would be perfect for a lightning strike," he told the Daily Mail.

According to the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), if airplanes are not adequately protected from lightning strikes — extremely high voltages and currents can pass through the aircraft, which are capable of damaging component assemblies or destroying wiring and equipment.

However, the body of a plane must be bonded with metal so it can act as a conductor, allowing electricity to pass through it in order to survive the jolts.

Without the metallic bonding, lightning could cause a plane to explode on impact.

The worst incident ever recorded involving a lightning strike occurred in 1976 when a lightning bolt hit the fuel tanks of a Boeing 707 flying over Maryland in the US, killing 81 people on-board.

link : http://my.news.yahoo.com/blogs/singaporescene/plane-hit-lightning-caught-video-052516758.html