Search Results

AEA Technology is carrying out an ongoing programme of lightning simulation testing work on carbon composite ‘T-joints’. These typically represent skin to spar bolted interfaces, and the tests help to determine whether aircraft fuel tanks incorporating such structures are liable to produce sparks during a lightning attachment. For testing, the T-joints are integrated into a complex test rig that is intended to provide representative current flow during the simulation tests. The intention is that the current distribution in the T-joint should be similar to the current distribution on the equivalent part of the aircraft structure during a lightning attachment. A combined experimental testing and computational modelling work programme has been carried out in order to investigate how representative the test-rig current distribution is to that on a real aircraft. In the first part of this study the test rig itself is modelled using the 3D code ELECTRA.