Hi welcome, Did you wonder about what happens when lightning strikes your airplane? Particularly on cold rainy days.
If so, let's see how to deal with it.
As a law of the scientist Faraday, the current flowing through the closed metal circuit has no effect on its interior.
For discovering this, we have to say thanks to our scientists.
As we know, it is safer to be in the car than to stand outside during the lightning. If lightning strikes metal skin of the car directly discharges the electricity to the earth but for flying aircraft.
The plane flies above the clouds. Many natural changes occur in the 'troposphere' layer which is the first and lowest region of the sky. Many changes such as Thunder, lightning, and rain clouds occur in this layer.
Above this, there is a second layer called 'stratosphere', the plane will fly and there is no impact from climate change.
While landing, aircraft must cross the first layer of the cloud. Then there is a high chance of thunder and lightning to hit the plane.
Lightning is the flow of high voltage light from one cloud to another or to the ground. When more electricity flows in the short term, the entire aircraft receives power levels. But no electricity flows inside the aircraft because the plane is the closed metal. Current flows only through its periphery.
The metal body of the aircraft not only made up pure aluminum(AL) but with composite material, they get the special conductive mesh material called a copper foil.
This copper foil acts as faraday's cage. In 1836 Michael Faraday invented the Faraday cage to protect the equipment from electromagnetic radiation. Thus there is no danger to those inside the aircraft.
Due to the current flowing around the plane, there is no way to go into the earth. As the aircraft speeds up, the friction of the air creates a 'static' level current. That is called 'static electricity'. Therefore, all parts of the aircraft are connected by an electrical conductor. Only then, throughout the aircraft, will the same electrical power remain constant.
A sharp object called 'static discharge' or 'static eliminator', which is mounted side by side in the wings of the aircraft will discharge electricity into the air. Therefore, only the area where the current flows out is slightly affected. There will be no great danger or cause of the fire in the aircraft.
Then that sharp object 'static discharger' is likely to be vulnerable. The aviation engineer will take care of it immediately and do the alignment work, especially after the aircraft has landed. The carbon in the aircraft tires will transmit the ground electricity into the ground in several ways. For that, carbon will be present in the aircraft tires.
When heavy lightning hit aircraft likely, it discharges it through static eliminator even though some minor damages to the metal part, radio, or electronic devices might happen but that really not an urgent issue to rectify since all main electrical components have its redundancy on its plane.
After a flash of lightning, the pilot checks all the interior systems. If anything goes wrong, they land the aircraft to the nearest airport.
Because of the lightning strike, the planes are unlikely to crash. So there is no need to be afraid of being struck by lightning while flying in an airplane.