FDTD Simulation of a Small-Scale Charged Airplane Model in an Ambient Electric Field between Two Flat Electrodes

Abstract

When an airplane flies in an electric field under a thundercloud, electric fields at the edges and projected portions of the airplane are enhanced and leaders emanate from there. When a positive leader emanating upward from the airplane connects with a downward negative leader from the bottom of an ordinary thundercloud and a negative leader emanating downward from the airplane connects with an upward positive leader from the ground, a large lightning current flows along the channel bridged between the thundercloud and the ground through the airplane. Recently, a method to reduce the risk of lightning strikes to airplanes has been proposed. It controls the charge on the surface of an airplane to suppress the electric field at edges and projected portions of the airplane. In this paper, an airplane under a thundercloud is represented with a vertical conducting bar or a horizontal conducting bar with a small projected portion, which is placed between impulse-high-voltage-applied two flat electrodes, and it is analyzed using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. Corona and leader discharges emanating from edges and projected portions of an airplane model are considered with their engineering representations: 40-μS/m and 0.02 S/m conducting regions for corona and leader discharges, respectively. The airplane model is not pre-charged or pre-charged negatively. It follows from the FDTD-computed results that pre-charging an airplane model with a relevant amount of negative charge can avoid discharges from and to the airplane model. © 2024 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan and Wiley Periodicals LLC.