NASA Logo

NTRS

NTRS - NASA Technical Reports Server

Back to Results
A wide bandwidth electrostatic field sensor for lightning researchData obtained from UHF Radar observation of direct-lightning strikes to the NASA F-106B airplane have indicated that most of the 690 strikes acquired during direct-strike lightning tests were triggered by the aircraft. As an aid in understanding the triggered lightning process, a wide bandwidth electric field measuring system was designed for the F-106B by implementing a clamped-detection signal processing concept originated at the Air Force Cambridge Research Lab in 1953. The detection scheme combines the signals from complementary stator pairs clamped to zero volts at the exact moment when each stator pair is maximally shielded by the rotor, a process that restores the dc level lost by the charge amplifier. The new system was implemented with four shutter-type field mills located at strategic points on the airplane. The bandwidth of the new system was determined in the laboratory to be from dc to over 100 Hz, whereas past designs had upper limits of 10 Hz to 100 Hz. To obtain the undisturbed electric field vector and total aircraft charge, the airborne field mill system is calibrated by using techniques involving results from ground and flight calibrations of the F-106B, laboratory tests of a metallized model, and a finite-difference time-domain electromagnetic computer code.
Document ID
19860065522
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Zaepfel, K. P.
(NASA Langley Research Center Hampton, VA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 12, 2013
Publication Date
June 1, 1986
Subject Category
Instrumentation And Photography
Accession Number
86A50260
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

Available Downloads

There are no available downloads for this record.
No Preview Available