Why can t planes get struck by lightning while flying in the air? Please, 3Q

The plane flies in the stratosphere, the lightning strike occurs in the troposphere, and the troposphere is below the stratosphere, how can it be hit? Right! Oh.

Lightning strikes once, but because most of the casing is a conductor, when the aircraft is struck by lightning, the current will flow through the casing, and the lightning rod extended from the fuselage or wings will be discharged, and will not enter the conductor to hurt the passengers inside, but the magnetic field formed by the strong current will affect the electronic or electrical system on the aircraft. But what if it's struck by lightning? On average, an aircraft can be struck by lightning every tens of thousands of hours, but fortunately, this powerful current only flows smoothly through the fuselage or wing skin, leaving small ablation holes or gaps.

Modern new aircraft have well-sealed structural fuel tanks that prevent sparks from detonating. However, if these charges do not try to be released, once the plane lands, they will try their best to find a way to vent, for example, once the personnel and fuel filling trucks are close, these charges will wait for the opportunity to release all the electrical energy, resulting in the phenomenon of "flashover", resulting in damage to personnel, equipment and equipment, and even fuel gas! Therefore, when the plane is flying, you have to try to release as much charge as possible.

In the case of a small aircraft, the fuselage does not accumulate too much charge, and the wing tips can discharge themselves during flight. However, if it is a large aircraft, it will be equipped with an electrostatic discharger on the main wing or tail of the aircraft, which can discharge through the tip to release the excess accumulated electrostatic charge into the atmosphere during flight, and some aircraft even have as many as 10 electrostatic dischargers. When the aircraft is on the ground or for maintenance, it must be connected to the grounding bolt with a grounding wire, which can safely direct the remaining charge to the ground, and can also keep the aircraft at the same potential as the ground to avoid inductive discharge or lightning strikes.

In this way, the plane will not be afraid of the sky and the earth!

A lightning strike on an airplane is not a big deal for flight:

On average, an aircraft may be struck by lightning once every 10,000 flight hours, but since most of the casing is a conductor, these powerful currents will only flow smoothly through the fuselage or wing skin, leaving small ablation holes or gaps, which are not a major problem for the aircraft to fly. Modern new aircraft have well-sealed structural fuel tanks that prevent sparks from detonating, and lightning does not enter the conductor and injure the passengers inside. However, the magnetic field formed by the strong current will have a great impact on the system.

Measures to reduce aircraft from lightning strikes:

In order to reduce the chance and harm of aircraft being struck by lightning, there are two ways to do this:

1. Adopt many lightning rods protruding from the fuselage or wings to discharge.

2. Use a good conductor to connect or cover the part of the bad conductor of the casing to channel the current and reduce the damage.

Because most (90%) of the lightning that strikes the aircraft is triggered by the aircraft, and the remaining 10% (the lightning that starts naturally) also plays a key role in the distortion of the electric field caused by the aircraft itself, which will make the discharge more producible, and the "pilot" that starts from the airframe will develop towards the "pilot" that starts in the cloud, which in turn leads to the final lightning strike.

While airplanes can be struck by lightning, most of them do not lead to catastrophic consequences. "This is mainly due to the fact that the current commercial aircraft shell is made of metal material, which has a good shielding effect, and the personnel and equipment inside the aircraft are relatively safe. But that doesn't mean the plane didn't suffer any damage when it was struck by lightning.

The aircraft is not a fully shielded "Faraday cage", there are many openings in it, some areas are non-metallic (such as the radome in the front of the aircraft), and some antennas are exposed, and the intense electromagnetic radiation from lightning can still cause serious damage. In addition, strong lightning currents can also cause the metal to melt.