Tau.Neutrino said:
Electrically-charged airplanes could avoid lightning strikes
Thunderstorms are something air pilots prefer to avoid, but nonetheless it is estimated that every commercial aircraft is struck by lightning once a year. While this statistic isn’t as alarming as it seems, engineers from MIT, under the sponsorship of Boeing, are looking to bring the numbers down by electrically charging airplanes to make them less attractive to lightning.
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> For decades, engineers have protected planes against lightning by installing shielding, grounds, surge suppressors, and other measures. This is especially the case in regard to the fuel tanks. In addition, aircraft made out of composites have a fine metallic mesh incorporated in them to act as a Faraday cage.
They forgot to mention leakers.
> The MIT idea is to avoid lightning strikes by putting a temporary negative electric charge on a plane as a way of dampening any build up of a positive charge. This prevents the overall charge from reaching a critical level and starting a lightning strike. This would be done though an automated system of sensors and actuators fed by small power supplies. The sensors would detect any build up of an electric charge and the actuators would send out a counter charge not much stronger than that needed to light a light bulb.
That’s not such a bad idea, it’s similar to the way that current is sometimes applied to metals in a corrosive environment to stop corrosion. It would only stop airplanes from initiating lightning strikes. It wouldn’t stop aircraft from being hit by lightning. A different approach that would do the same thing is to use an outer coating that is more triboelectrically negative than air. According to this chart, that’s every possible surface material.
