In-flight lightning measurement system ildas: system architecture definition, based on analysis of first flight data

A.I. de Boer, National Aerospace Laboratory, NLR, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
S.M. Bardet, National Aerospace Laboratory, NLR, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A.P.J. van Deursen, Eindhoven University of Technology TU/e, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
J.F. Boissin, Airbus Operations, Flight and Integration Test Centre, Toulouse, France
F. Flourens, Airbus Operations, Flight and Integration Test Centre, Toulouse, France

Abstract

At the previous SFTE-EC Symposium, the history of the In-flight Lightning Damage Assessment System (ILDAS) programme was presented (ref. [1]). The goal of the programme is to (a) extend knowledge on the interaction between lightning and aircraft in flight, with the aim of improving reliability and maintenance, (b) to be able to correlate events during flight tests with lightning characteristics, and (c) to investigate the use of in-flight lightning data for optimisation of post-strike maintenance. Within the ILDAS-2 project the goal is to have an operational lightning measurement system on board the A350 XWB test aircraft during its icing campaign flights.

An initial, limited-scale 'engineering setup' was installed on an Airbus A340 aircraft in March 2011, which performed several flights through lightning. The data from these flights were analysed to verify the performance of the sensor and acquisition system in a real lightning environment, and to assess algorithms for lightning strike detection. The results of the engineering test phase allowed the final decisions to be made on the architecture for the final application on the A350.

The paper highlights several key findings from the 2011 campaign and describes the resulting architecture of the system. A validation test campaign was conducted in March 2012 where a full-architecture implementation was on board, but results of this campaign are not available yet.