Flammability of electrically conductive composite dedicated for lightning strike protection
Andrzej Katunin,Marcin Bilewicz
Quarterly No. 3, 2017 pages 131-135
DOI:
keywords: flammability, lightning strike protection, flame retardancy, carbon fabric
abstract Lightning strike protection is one of the crucial structural demands for aircraft composites addressed to their integrity and durability after a strike. When the lightning strikes a classic composite structure, the generated heat from electrical resistance as well as mechanical impulse resulting from acoustic wave propagation, might cause serious damage. Currently used metallic meshes and foils immersed in composite structures are effective in dissipating lightning charges and generated heat, however, such a solution has numerous disadvantages like increasing mass, problems with adhesion on the metal/polymer interface, complicated manufacturing technology, etc. Therefore, a fully organic conductive composite was developed as an alternative to current solutions. After a lightning strike the developed composite should not only effectively conduct and dissipate the electrical charge and generated heat, but also stop burning, which appears due to very high temperature values in the vicinity of the strike area. In this study, flammability tests were performed for a classic carbon fabric-reinforced composite as well as for the developed conductive polymer and carbon fabric-reinforced composite based on this polymer for comparative purposes, with measurement of the combustion temperature. The obtained results show that the developed composite is characterized by sufficiently low flammability, however, further studies will be focused on further improvement of flame retardancy.