Mechanical damage from a simulated lightning strike in protected carbon fibre-reinforced polymer laminates
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This work presents a three-dimensional implementation of a continuum damage mechanics model and of physically-based models of the mechanical loads induced by lightning strikes in protected carbon fibre-reinforced polymers. Two alternative solutions for the supersonic expansion of the hot plasma channel are considered, an analytical strong shock wave approximation and a solution obtained from Computational Fluid Dynamics. The proposed implementation is validated using experimental data for composite laminates with two different lightning protection systems subjected to simulated lightning strike. It is also shown that the proposed implementation can capture the influence of stacking sequence on the orientation of the damaged area distribution and on the size of the damage projected areas.
