ABSTRACT
Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) are being employed at wide for use in aerospace structures because of their superior thermal and mechanical properties compared to those of metal materials. Owing to growing interest as well as economic investment of these advanced composites by large commercial aircraft manufacturers, such as Boeing and Airbus, research focusing on the damage associated with lighting strikes is of paramount importance-as the favoured composite now make up a large material fraction of next generation aircraft, one that is continually increasing. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which is comprised of over 50 percent CFRPs, has had many of its major components replaced with CFRPs during the iteration from past designs (Feraboli and Miller 2009). However, CFRPs are highly resistive to electrical currents and unlike metal airframes, which act like a Faraday cage and conduct away high currents, CFRPs act like a dielectric and because of resistive heating, due to the Joule effect, significant damage can occur due to material decomposition.
