Composite materials are used in aeronautics for their mechanical properties and their lightness. Unfortunately, their conductivity is not isotropic and is lower than Aluminum, the material previously used. When a lightning event occurs, if the material resistance is too high, the current flowing in the structure may induce damage. To prevent this, new aeronautic materials are tested according to the following test procedure: a 100 kA impulse current flows in the material through a 10 cm arc. As our team develops codes on this problematic [1] to model and simulate the effect of such high current on new materials, we built a test bench producing a 10 cm arc of 100 kA with a biexponential current curve as defined by the aeronautic standard. The measurements obtained with this system will provide necessary data to validate our MHD simulation code.

This work presents the test bench, the current associated diagnostics and the preliminary results. Firstly, fast imaging is used with a 500 kfps camera to gather qualitative results such as arc dimensions and arc turbulence observation. Secondly, emission spectroscopy provides quantitative data on plasma temperature and pressure by solving the radiative transfer equation on two positions across the plasma channel for different timing.