FDTD-Based Electric-Field Analysis of a Small-Scale Airplane Model Under a Thundercloud

When an airplane flies under a thundercloud, electric fields at the edges might be intense enough to generate corona and/or leader discharges. If upward and downward leaders from the airplane are connected to a downward leader from the thundercloud and an upward leader from the ground, respectively, a high current would flow through the airplane. In this paper, a finite-difference time-domain simulation is performed to simulate a small-scale experiment, in which a vertical electric field is formed between two parallel electrodes and an airplane model is placed at the center of the space between the parallel electrodes. Two airplane models are employed: a Y-shape model simulating an airplane with the fuselage axis tilted at an angle of 20 degrees, at which the tip of one of the main wings is at the same altitude as the tip of the vertical stabilizer, and a vertical bar model. Although the generation times of positive corona, negative corona, and positive leader discharges are different for the <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mathbf{Y}$</tex>-shape model and the vertical bar model, the negative leader generation time and the breakdown time are the same for these two models.