Abstract: In order to study the lightning damage characteristics of carbon fiber composite laminates under different protection methods, the lightning damage of three kinds of carbon fiber composite laminates, which are unprotected, aluminum-coated and copper-mesh-protected, is studied by the way of simulation and test. Three kinds of laminated plate models are established in the finite element simulation software, and A+B+C^* combined waveform lightning current is uniformly applied to analyze the damage characteristics of the laminated plate under different protective methods, at the same time, the protective effect of copper mesh with different characteristic parameters is evaluated. The simulation results show that the damage shape is determined by the conductivity laminates. The damage shape of unprotected laminates is related to the laminates, the damage area and depth of the laminate are reduced effectively with protection of spraying aluminum or copper mesh, the damage area and damage depth decrease with the increase of the width of copper mesh. The validity of the finite element model is verified by experiments.

Key words: carbon fiber composites, protective methods, electrothermal coupling, damage area, depth of damage