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Understanding of Aircraft Interaction with Lightning and Thunderclouds

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A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Meteorology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (6 May 2022) | Viewed by 15326

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Special Issue Editor

Dr. Pavlo Kochkin

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Guest Editor

Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, 5020 Bergen, Norway
Interests: atmospheric electricity; lightning; Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes (TGFs); Long Gamma-Ray Glows; long laboratory sparks; lightning interaction with aircraft
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The Special Issue on aircraft interaction with lightning and thunderclouds is dedicated to attracting scientific attention to:

The phenomenon of lightning strikes to airplanes, helicopters, drones, and everything that is flying and will soon be flying in the atmosphere;
Understanding of possible effects of thundercloud-related radiation on the aircraft.

Generally, lightning is not considered a major threat to modern aviation. Aircraft are built and tested to withstand severe lightning impacts and have been demonstrated to be a safe and reliable way of transportation. A commercial aircraft in the Northern hemisphere is hit by lightning on average once a year. Despite financial losses for the airliner and frustration for the passengers, such events are usually manageable and cause no dramatic issues. However, this may change in the future.

The current level of air transportation is environmentally unsustainable. The boom of low-cost airliners and humanity wealth growth have already made air travel a bigger contributor to climate change than automobiles. In addition, several thousand new airplanes will be built soon to satisfy the demand from rapidly growing economies in Asia and Africa. The pressure imposed on the aviation industry by climate change will inevitably make us reconsider the way we build and operate aircraft, including the way we protect new aircraft in severe weather environments.

The use of advanced materials, technological progress in batteries, and hydrogen-powered generators is the way to sustainable aviation. As always, science will help and support the aviation industry on its way to this change.

On the other hand, recent advancements in our understanding of lightning and discovery of new atmospheric phenomena originating in thunderclouds have created new challenges that need to be addressed. Lightning is known to generate bursts of X-ray radiation during its propagation. Thunderclouds are considered to be natural particle accelerators and in fact can produce very high energy bursts of hard radiation known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes at as low as 10 km altitude. New types of atmospheric discharges were recently discovered above thunderclouds, where airplanes were always considered to be safe. We need to understand the possible effects of long-lasting gamma-ray glows produced by thunderclouds on air transportation. Finally, a recent remarkable discovery of positron annihilation in the vicinity of a regular passenger airplane highlights the complexity and importance of the topic.

In this Special Issue of Atmosphere, we invite scientists and researchers from R&D departments to join our efforts in advancing our understanding of aircraft interaction with lightning and thunderclouds. In-flight experimental campaigns, laboratory research, and modeling on the topics described above are highly appreciated and welcomed.

Dr. Pavlo Kochkin
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

lightning
aircraft
atmospheric discharges
long gamma-ray glows
terrestrial gamma-ray flashes

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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18 pages, 3140 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Modeling of Bi-Polar Leader Inception and Propagation from Flying Aircraft Prior to a Lightning Strike

by Sayantan Das and Udaya Kumar

Atmosphere 2022, 13(6), 943; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13060943 - 09 Jun 2022

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1851

Abstract

Lightning is one of the major environmental threats to aircraft. The lightning strikes during flying are mostly attributed to aircraft-triggered lightning. The first step toward designing suitable protective measures against lightning is identifying the attachment locations. For this purpose, oversimplified approaches are currently employed, which do not represent the associated discharge phenomena. Therefore, in this work, a suitable model is developed for simulating the inception and propagation of bi-polar leader discharge from the aircraft. Modeling of leader discharges requires field computation around the aircraft, which is carried out employing the Surface Charge Simulation Method (SCSM) combined with sub-modeling, which ensures the best accuracy of field computations near nosecone, wingtips, etc. A DC10 aircraft model is considered for the simulation. Simulations are performed for different pairs of leader inception points on aircraft using the developed model. Subsequently, corresponding ambient fields required for stable bi-polar discharge from aircraft are determined. These values are in the range of measured ambient fields reported in the literature. In summary, the present work has come up with a suitable model for simulating the bi-polar leader inception and propagation from the flying aircraft. Using the same, a detailed quantitative description of the discharge phenomena from the aircraft is provided. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding of Aircraft Interaction with Lightning and Thunderclouds)

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16 pages, 6946 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Thundercloud Electrostatic Field Measurements during the Inflight EXAEDRE Campaign and during Lightning Strike to the Aircraft

by Magalie Buguet, Philippe Lalande, Pierre Laroche, Patrice Blanchet, Aurélie Bouchard and Arnaud Chazottes

Atmosphere 2021, 12(12), 1645; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12121645 - 08 Dec 2021

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2774

Abstract

The AMPERA (Atmospheric Measurement of Potential and ElectRic field on Aircraft) electric field network was integrated on the Falcon 20 (F20) of SAFIRE (the French facility for airborne research) in the framework of EXAEDRE (EXploiting new Atmospheric Electricity Data for Research and the Environment) project. From September 2018, an in-flight campaign was performed over Corsica (France) to investigate the electrical activity in thunderstorms. During this campaign, eight scientific flights were done inside or in the vicinity of a thunderstorm. The purpose of this paper is to present the AMPERA system and the atmospheric electrostatic field recorded during the flights, and particularly during the pass inside electrified clouds, in which the aircraft was struck by lightning. The highest value of atmospheric electrostatic field recorded during these flights was around 79 kV·m⁻¹ at 8400 m of altitude. A normalization of these fields is done by computing the reduced atmospheric electrostatic field to take into account the altitude effect (ratio between the atmospheric electrostatic field and the air density). Most of the significant values of reduced atmospheric electrostatic field magnitude retrieved during this campaign occur between around 5.5 and 9.5 km and are included between 50 and 100 kV·m⁻¹. The highest value measured of the reduced atmospheric electrostatic field is 194 kV·m⁻¹ during the lightning strike of the F20. The merging of these results with data from former campaigns suggests that there is a threshold (depending of the aircraft size) for the striking of an aircraft. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding of Aircraft Interaction with Lightning and Thunderclouds)

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21 pages, 8327 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Laboratory Investigation of the Probable Mechanisms of the Action of an Artificial Thunderstorm Cell on Model Aircraft Radomes

by Nikolay Lysov, Alexander Temnikov, Leonid Chernensky, Alexander Orlov, Olga Belova, Tatiana Kivshar, Dmitry Kovalev, Mikhail Belyakov and Vadim Voevodin

Atmosphere 2021, 12(12), 1637; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12121637 - 07 Dec 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2257

Abstract

The results of experimental laboratory investigations of possible mechanisms of the impact of lightning and thunderclouds on aircraft radomes and equipment inside them are presented. An artificial thunderstorm cell of negative polarity and model aircraft radomes with lightning diverter strips have been used. Experiments have shown that the discharge processes in a radome model significantly depend on the magnitude of the charge that accumulates on the inner and outer surfaces of the radome shell. It is established that the accumulation of large-magnitude charges of different signs on the outer and/or inner surface of the radome (up to hundreds of µC/m²) shell leads to a multivariance of the mechanisms of development of discharge processes inside the radome model, along its surface, and in the space near it. Significant influence of the “reverse” discharge from the antenna model under the radome on the types of current impulses recorded on the antennas under impact of the artificial thunderstorm cell is established. Peculiarities of the discharge formation in the radome model when using solid and segmented diverter strips for its protection are revealed. Parameters of the current impulses registered on the diverter strips and the antennas have been determined. Based on the conducted research, the possible mechanisms of the impact of thunderclouds and lightning discharges on radio-transparent aircraft radomes and the equipment inside them are considered. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding of Aircraft Interaction with Lightning and Thunderclouds)

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13 pages, 3309 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Protection of Aircraft Radomes against Direct Lightning Strikes—An Overview

by Christian Karch, Fridolin Heidler and Christian Paul

Atmosphere 2021, 12(9), 1141; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12091141 - 04 Sep 2021

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4375

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to design and test the lightning protection of an aircraft radome exposed to direct lightning strikes. The influencing parameters are investigated on different radome wall samples equipped with solid and segmented diverter strips. The effectiveness of the lightning interception and protection measures is tested with different high-voltage waveforms and representative high-current pulses. The tests show that reliable radome lightning protection can be achieved by an optimized arrangement of solid and segmented diverter strips, even if the aircraft radome has a huge size, with dimensions up to several meters. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding of Aircraft Interaction with Lightning and Thunderclouds)

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Other

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12 pages, 478 KiB

Open AccessBrief Report

What Determines the Parameters of a Propagating Streamer: A Comparison of Outputs of the Streamer Parameter Model and of Hydrodynamic Simulations

by Nikolai G. Lehtinen and Robert Marskar

Atmosphere 2021, 12(12), 1664; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12121664 - 11 Dec 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2106

Abstract

Electric streamer discharges (streamers) in the air are a very important stage of lightning, taking place before formation of the leader discharge, and with which an electric discharge starts from conducting objects which enhance the background electric field, such as airplanes. Despite years of research, it is still not well understood what mechanism determines the values of a streamer’s parameters, such as its radius and propagation velocity. The novel Streamer Parameter Model (SPM) was made to explain this mechanism, and to provide a way to efficiently calculate streamer parameters. Previously, we demonstrated that SPM results compared well with a limited set of experimental data. In this article, we compare SPM predictions to the published hydrodynamic simulation (HDS) results. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Understanding of Aircraft Interaction with Lightning and Thunderclouds)

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