Using a Design-of-Experiment Technique to Consider the Wire Harness Load Impedances in the FDTD Model of an Aircraft Struck by Lightning

Nowadays, with the increasing use of composite materials, lightning indirect effects on aircrafts are an important problem of interest. Currents and voltages induced by the lightning strike can perturb the equipment working. The numerical tool developed in previous works allows one to estimate the current coupling on wires involved by the lightning strike. The induced disturbances are entirely computed using the finite-difference time-domain method. In this paper, an improvement of the numerical model is detailed in order to take into account more efficiently the load impedances of the wire harness in a critical zone of the aircraft. The application of a design-of-experiment approach is proposed to consider the uncertainty about the load impedances values. This approach permits us both to study the influence of the load impedances values on the currents and to define a variation domain of the induced currents' waveforms. The numerical model aims at assisting the aircraft manufacturer during the aircraft design and more particularly during the certification process.