Abstract:
This thesis describes a new approach to lightning protection components design by
incorporating the use of multiple data sources, aircraft environmental threats models
and component characteristics to determine if the component design meets the
continued airworthiness requirements. This innovative aircraft lightning protection
component design methodology examines critical component characteristics and
evaluates these characteristics for long term survivability given known environmental
design data. Use of in-service data, test data, material sciences and detailed
component construction produces predictive results and provides inputs for the
design community.
A simple case of non-active lightning protection components was used to validate this
methodology, concluding that certain design degradation mitigations are necessary to
improve the continued airworthiness performance.
Following this validation, the methodology was exercised by several case studies using
actual design data from a large transport aircraft. The case studies provide for
understanding how the methodology can be applied and showed that value was
produced in creating design optimizations for the protection components. The case
studies also proved that the methodology could be applied to different lightning
protection designs spanning from structural design protection components to systems
infrastructure transport elements and wiring. For this work, analysis sheets were
designed to provide the necessary design assessments to apply the methodology.
Finally, the thesis concludes that application of this design methodology worked well
for evaluation and optimization of lightning protection components and may work
well for other aircraft system components. Future work associated with this study
suggests that the methodology could more effectively deployed by use of an
integrated computing system with the ability to share data efficiently between key
design groups including electrical wiring design, electrical earthing engineering,
electrical standards engineering, structural protection engineering and maintenance
engineering departments.
