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Case Western Researchers Build Tougher Wind Turbine Blades

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed a toughened wind turbine blade that uses polyurethane and carbon nanotubes. The results was a much lighter, more resilient blade. The addition of the carbon nanotubes would make the blade somewhat conductive and attractive to lightning. This will be a significant difficulty as the research progresses forwards. See the articles here: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110830102159.htm...

Lightning Punctures JetBlue ERJ-190 Nose Radome

It appears the Embraer ERJ-190 radomes are susceptible to lightning punctures.  The following pictures show a recent lightning strike. The metal bar diverters on the ERJ-190 do not extend far enough forward to protect the radome tip.  This is a common problem as metal bar diverters degrade the RF signal of the weather radar.  To compensate, the metal bar diverters are kept short and out of the radome’s RF window. Many radome manufacturers have solved this problem by installing WXGuard lightning diverters from the ends of the metal bar diverters to the tip of the radome.  WXGuard segmented lightning diverters are RF transparent, rain erosion resistant and are a perfect solution to reduce costly radome...

Wind Turbines Increase Lightning Strikes In Denmark

A recent article from the Denmark newspaper Ingenioren highlights the effect of wind turbines on lightning strikes.  Please note this is a translated version of the article. Giant wind turbines create more lightning over Denmark Wind turbines growing pains increases their contact with the clouds, and it gets more lightning to sparkle over the Danish windmill parks. Now, researchers at DTU to lynsikre turbines expensive electronics.Not only climate change but also the growing volume of soaring turbine helps to get it to unzip and crack over Denmark.It tells an associate professor at DTU Elektro, Joachim Holbøll who is and has been involved in several projects involving the protection of wind turbines against lightning.”When the turbines are sufficiently high, affecting the probability of lightning that location. This means that a thunderstorm, which normally would not have generated lightning, are more likely to do it when thunder cloud must pass a high wind, “says Joachim Holbøll.He explains that the reason is that most lightning starts at a cloud and moving either toward other clouds, or down to the ground. When lightning is approaching land or water surface is the electric field between the lightning tip and the surface is so large that there will come less from such discharges. a tree, a church tower, a tower or a windmill, which moves upward.These bursts are looking toward the downward lightning. When the first of the upward bursts then reaches the downward lightning, we have a conductive connection, a very hot plasma, between cloud and ground.Cloud discharges, and lightning current rises, for example. 100,000 Amperes.”In the case of very tall objects, like a tower on a mountain or a...

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