Eurofighter Typhoon tested against lightning strikes

Eurofighter GmbH has completed a range of Lightning Strike Tests on the Eurofighter Typhoon Weapon System required as part of the Type Acceptance clearance ahead of Entry in to Service with the four partner nations Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. The tests, carried out at BAE SYSTEMS Warton, were performed on a Series Production Aircraft (SPA) - BT002.

Eurofighter Typhoon successfully withstood a number of 200,000 Amp simulated lightning strikes during tests in the BAE SYSTEMS Electronic Warfare Test Facility. This is the highest strike the Weapon Systems specification requires and also meets the necessary requirement for Type Acceptance.

Over the test programme, the aircraft ran 'live' with all necessary systems switched on. During the test the aircraft received hundreds of strikes of between 20k and 150k Amps before reaching the specified 200k Amp strike.

All testing to date has been conducted with the simulated strike entering at the nose and exiting at the engines or wing-tips - two of the most likely scenarios. The next stage is to computer model a further 23 entry/exit point scenarios to ensure system integrity is maintained in all possible combinations of entry and exit.

Tony Llewellyn, Electro-Magnetic Compatibility Technologist at BAE SYSTEMS said: "The Eurofighter Typhoon places a greater reliance on electronics and with a large percentage of the aircraft being carbon fibre, which is electrically resistive, it is much more difficult to protect the aircraft compared with its predecessors, which have a metal structure."

Chris Jones, Lightning Technologist at BAE SYSTEMS added "We believe that this is the first time ever in a clearance programme that an aircraft with all systems powered has been subjected to a 200k Amp simulated lightning strike and it is a great achievement for everyone involved that no critical systems effects resulted."

"The 200k Amp limit covers more than 99.9% of all lightning strikes to aircraft flying anywhere in the world, and on average a military aircraft gets struck by lightning twice in its entire life, so the chances of an aircraft ever being hit by a 200k Amp bolt are small. BT002 will have received 1,600 strikes by the time testing is complete, and we have successfully proved that Eurofighter Typhoon is more than capable of withstanding such a strike."

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