In-flight Lightning Damage Assessment System (ILDAS) : in-flight verification of multi-sensor measurement

The goal of the ILDAS programme is to develop an operational system for determining the current waveform and attachment points of lightning striking aircraft in-flight. During a flight campaign, the system’s performance was verified using a multi-sensor configuration, capable of real-time detection of lightning strikes on the aircraft and automatic high-rate synchronous measurement and subsequent recording of sensor data from eight magnetic and one electric-field sensors. The measurement setup is presented, calibration is addressed and the first results from the flight test are presented.