Composite materials have diverse engineering applications including the automotive, energy and aerospace industries. In manufacturing aircraft structures, the material is expected to endure atmospheric discharges. The present paper aims to model some of the effects of lightning strikes on a composite materials modeled through numerical simulation. The simulation is based on the finite-difference time-domain method which allows analysis the electromagnetic and thermal effects related to the problem. Aerospace standards are taken into account for modeling a lightning strike on a composite plate. The thermal distribution is evaluated based on results obtained from an electromagnetic simulation of the lightning strike effect. Since multiphysics problems are complex, the hypotheses adopted to obtain the results are also discussed. Results show the current density distribution on a carbon fiber reinforced plastic plate varying with the anisotropy characteristics of the material. From the thermal simulation it is shown that the lightning strike can cause a rise in the composite temperature over 900 °C with only 1 μs of interaction with the material.
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