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As part of an update of all of the lightning-related advisory materials for aircraft certification purposes, SAE Committee AE4L and EUROCAE Working Group 31 have completed preparation of a new standard for location of lightning strike zones on aircraft surfaces [Ref. 1]. This new standard is intended to replace the zoning guidelines presently found in US FAA Advisory Circular 20-53A (for fuel systems) and 20-136 (for electronics systems) and in certain military standards, and is known as “the zoning standard”. The new Zoning Standard includes clearer definitions of the lightning strike zones and adds a transition zone between presently defined Zones 1A and 2A. Much of the document addresses the methods to locate the various zones in aircraft and helicopters. This standard, together with a new Environment Standard and updates of the existing FAA AC’s on lightning protection certification, are expected to be formally adopted by the FAA and JAA.

The proposed revisions of AC 20-136 and AC 20-53A by the SAE and EUROCAE lightning committees do not include the lightning environment parameters as has been the case in the previous version of these AC's. The committees have recently drafted a new “Aircraft Lightning Environment and Related Test Waveforms Standard” known as SAE-AE4L-97-4, the “Purple Book” in the U.S, and EUROCAE ED84 in Europe. This document contains a description of the phenomenology related to aircraft lightning interaction, and all the external parameters of the environment (i.e. current, statistics, repetition rate, etc.) and the associated representative waveforms. Moreover, the definitions of multiple burst and multiple stroke environment have been revisited based on a better understanding of the statistics of lightning.