Carbon fibre composites with multi-nanofillers for lightning strike protection

Lightning strike is one of the most powerful forces of nature that strikes commercial aircraft more than once a year. There have been no catastrophic failure reported so far, however, lighting can also damage the composite aircraft structures like paint burnt, fibre damaged, and layer removed due to an inadequate or inappropriate design of protection finish. Carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites, which are essential light-weight structural materials due to their great combination of high strength and modulus with low density, considerably increase applying in various industrial applications, including automobile, civil, aeronautical, and aerospace applications. The major two aircraft manufacturing companies do also use composite materials approximately 50% and 53% of its structural weight in Boeing B787 and Airbus A350 [1], respectively. However, electrical and thermal conductivities of CFRP are relatively low in through-thickness direction compare to conventional metal alloy structures that are vulnerable to lightning strike damage. Therefore, the development of out-of-plane electrical and thermal conductivities is required for lightning strike protection (LSP) applications in aircraft structures to solve this parasitic electrical and thermal management issues such as discharging lightning current away from critical areas and shielding against electromagnetic interference (EMI). Due to the effect of electromagnetic interference (EMI), it can interfere and degrade avionic equipment performances or even malfunctions. The internal heat creation must promptly dissipate to the outside surroundings before the limitation of composite materials has been reached that subject to overheat and failure. In the aerospace industry, the solution for CFRP composites recently depends on metallic material structures that are essentially in the form of metallic mesh and expanded foil made of copper and aluminum. They present high conductivity and heat of vaporization that is necessary condition to manage with massive current levels of lightning strike. However, they are comparatively heavy, less corrosion resistance, and weakening by the adjacent materials between metals and composites.