Have you ever thought about how aircraft keep flying despite adverse environmental conditions, or what happens when lightning strikes an aircraft; Nowadays, many images are seen reflecting this situation, it is also believed that an airplane can be affected by this atmospheric phenomenon at least once every 130 flights, and how is it that this amount of electricity does not affect the people who are inside it or the aircraft?
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Michael Faraday and electricity
Michael Faraday was a British scientist who experimented with electricity, doing a lot of research, one of them was the Faraday cage as it is known today, where Faraday discovered that while the electrical current was applied around the metal cage, this current did not affect what was inside her; that is why when lightning strikes the plane, the passengers are not affected, although the plane is not built like a cage, the materials used for its construction are metal, which makes the current circulate through it, preventing the passage of current to passengers.
Electro static discharge
Because airplanes are not in contact with the earth when they rub against the air, it is charged with electrostatic energy, just like when one rubs a balloon against the shirt, and we attract the hair towards the balloon; but lightning is attracted to the aircraft, which cannot be dodged when the plane goes through a storm; that is why we can sometimes observe how the lightning strikes the airplanes.
For all this, the engineers built metal antennas that are on the trailing edge of the air in the aircraft, these work as a conductor that handles the release of any current load that the aircraft has, which are generated by the air friction or just a lightning strike; these drivers prevent the discharge from causing structural damage to the aircraft, and that is why they must always be checked and that they are all present at the time of flight.
Fire of San Telmo
It is a natural phenomenon that occurs when there is an extensive amount of electrical charge in the environment, and it can jump from one side to the other of a metallic point; although it is called fire, it is actually nothing but electrically charged plasma, and this when passing the electrical charge produces color changes; this phenomenon is so rare that few people know about it, but sometimes pilots experience it when passing storms for the first time. They heard this phenomenon in sailing boats; when this phenomenon was formed in the masts lighting the tip of each of them as if it were on fire, but because it was only plasma, after passing the area was extinguished, and when climbing they saw that there was never a fire.
The lightning bolt and the aircraft
Aircraft have an extensive amount of equipment that works with electricity, but thanks to engineering, these are coated to prevent electromagnetic rays, electric discharges, or any charge from affecting them and presenting failures; when lightning strikes an aircraft, the electric current circulates this and is directed to the electrostatic discharges mainly to the tail of the aircraft or the wingtips and this ray would continue its journey to the ground; therefore, the lightning will not affect the operation of the aircraft at all, and that is why even if the thunder or lightning strike is heard, it will not cause the aircraft to suffer an accident.
What do you think of this topic? Have you ever seen or felt lightning strike an aircraft?
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Image by Sethink via Pixabay under Creative Commons license.
