Computation model of electric field for aircraft penetrating clouds

This paper describes the electric field computation method for aircraft which are highly charged when penetrating clouds. This method establishes the computation model E=C[E_x E_y E_z Q]^T that of only the ambient atmospheric electric field and the aircraft net charge based on the method of moments. The numeric computation algorithm of C is studied based on the symmetry of an aircraft which can decrease a half patch and improve computational precision. Lacking analytical solutions of electric fields around real aircraft, this method is verified by a tractable ellipsoid as the simple fuselage model. Simulations have been performed to evaluate the precision of the method. The error at the tip is about 7% and is much smaller at off-tip point. Result analysis also shows that the aircraft net charge is the main corona trigger factor whether in strong ambient fields or not.