A COMPARISON OF NATURAL LIGHTNING AND THE LONG LABORATORY SPARK WITH APPLICATION TO LIGHTNING TESTING

Abstract

Laboratory sparks a few meters in length can be used to simulate lightning current rates-of-rise and peak values and to simulate some of the temporal characteristics of the lightning channel temperature. Long spark generators are inadequate for producing a simulation of the continuing current phase of lightning. Long sparks cannot be used to produce a simulation of the shock wave due to lightning except in that the spark data can be scaled by theory to predict the characteristics of the lightning shock wave. A short discussion is given of the several types of lightning which might be encountered by an aircraft. The validity of long-spark testing in determining the likely points of strike of a lightning discharge to an aircraft or other structure is briefly considered.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1970
Accession Number
AD0712308

Entities

People

  • M. A. Uman

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acoustic Properties
  • Aircrafts
  • Cameras
  • Charged Particles
  • Electrical Equipment
  • Electrical Properties
  • Electricity
  • Electron Density
  • Electrons
  • Measurement
  • Mechanical Structure
  • Peak Power
  • Peak Values
  • Photographs
  • Photography
  • Shock Waves
  • Time Intervals

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science
  • Physics

Readers

  • Combustion Dynamics and Shock Wave Physics.
  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Electrical Engineering