Thermal coupling analysis of lightning strike laminates

Abstract

In order to study the ablation damage mechanical properties of composite laminated plate under the action of lightning current, a thermal-mechanical coupling finite element analysis model of composite lightning strike was established. The validity of the model was verified by comparison with the experimental results. According to the three-dimensional Hashin failure criterion, the user material subroutines was programmed, and the mechanical damage around the lightning ablation area of the laminate, the mechanical damage distribution of each layer and the stress distributions of the first layer in different directions were obtained respectively. The analysis shows that the ablation damage of the laminates varies with the duration of the lightning current. The results show that due to the existence of a high temperature gradient, the laminated plate has have large thermal expansion stress, which leads to various mechanical damages inside the laminated plate, namely matrix cracking, delamination and fiber breakage. The lightning strike current application time, peak current and temperature field all have a great influence on the ablation area of the laminated plate.

Keywords

• lightning strike
• composite
• thermal-mechanical coupling
• failure criterion
• mechanical analysis