Thermoelectric coupling simulation lightning damage of aircraft composite

An analysis of lightning current conduction and the resulting damage to the composite material on aircraft was implemented in this paper by adopting the thermoelectric coupling through ABAQUS simulation. On the basis of the existing lightning simulation experiments, a three-dimensional finite element model of composite laminate was built; the electrical and thermal boundary condition together with the coupled material properties was introduced. As a result, the thermal distribution of lightning current and the damage process of composite laminate were therefore obtained from the simulation. It can be derived from the result that the shape as well as the size of the damage varies on different composite layers: by comparing the results of the four typical inducting lightning currents with the same peak magnitude as well as the damage generated in different layers, it is conclude that the damage area and the damage depth are proportional to the action integral.