Electrostatic Discharges and Grounding for Aircraft

Personnel safety could be compromised when people come into contact with precipitation static (P-static) on aircraft. Also electrostatic discharge by people on sensitive electronic devices in aircraft may damage the devices. Aircraft engineers should be on guard to protect passengers, staff and maintenance crew from the hazardous effects of electrostatic discharges due to P-static. Also, engineers should produce adequate electrostatic rules to protect aircraft electronics as maintenance crew come into contact with sensitive electronic devices. Application of electromagnetics (EM) knowledge is required to study these effects and take proper protective measures. These seemingly diverse effects are in actuality the same effect when analyzed with EM physics. Thus we treat these seemingly diverse effects with the same principle. Typical methods to reduce or eliminate these effects include grounding and bonding of aircraft, aircraft equipment, electronic devices, and workers working on and around electronic equipment. In this paper, we address the methods and guidance (1) to protect passengers and staff and to reduce the risk of being harmed from the electrostatic discharge effects at aircraft surface, which are sometimes called P-static, and (2) to protect the electrostatic discharge sensitive (ESDS) devices. In Section 1, we present electrostatic energy transfer diagrams to illustrate the issues and to establish the fundamental principle. In Section 2, we present the simple risk model which aids to resolve the risks and impacts. Then P-static and electrostatic discharges (ESD) are discussed for scenarios of personnel safety and fuel tanks using several public domain documents in Section 3. We examine ESD for aircraft electronic devices in Section 4, where we also discuss the lightning safety aspect. We conclude with a summary and suggestions for the future work for the aircraft P-static and ESD topics.