A lightning swept stroke model: A valuable tool to investigate the lightning strike to aircraft

In the context of lightning strike on the Dassault Falcon family of aircraft, the standard zoning of Falcon 50, 900 and 2000, inferred from FAA and EUROCAE WG31 documents [US Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Advisory Circular AC 20-53A, 1985; US Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, Advisory Circular AC 20-53B, Draft, 1991; EUROCAE WG 31, Aircraft Lightning Zoning Standard, ED-91, 1998], has been presented. Zoning proves to be quite similar between the three types of aircraft. Thanks to the feed-back on lightning strikes to Falcon, lightning traces have been observed on the fuselage for different flight conditions and aircraft. Observations are compared with the zoning performed by Dassault. A physical model, developed by ONERA, was used to simulate the sweeping of lightning on the fuselage of a Falcon 900. The results are in good agreement with the lightning traces observed on the fuselages.