Standards
NFPA 780
Chapter
8 in NFPA 780 deals with lightning protection of watercraft. The NFPA 780 technical committee that
revises this standard every four years contains many experts in the field
of lightning protection with representation from academia, defense labs,
telecommunications, insurance underwriters and equipment
manufacturers. See page 1 of the
latest NFPA Report on
Proposals (ROP) for a full list of members of the technical committee.
During this revision cycle, Dr.
Thomson of MLP attended two
meetings. In the first meeting he
gave a presentation to the committee
addressing some fundamental problems with existing lightning
protection standards for watercraft.
These problems are described here. The committee agreed that there were
issues. In preparation for the
second meeting, he rewrote major sections in Chapter 8 and submitted a
complete revised chapter for consideration by the committee. The standard is now published and can be purchased
in print or pdf form from NFPA
There are fundamental departures in
the NFPA standard from the ideas presented in ABYC TE4 and ISO 10134, which
have not yet adopted the concepts used for building protection. In addition to a new overall direction,
NFPA780-2008 also gives new technical details that are needed in
implementation. For example, when
using metals different from copper as part of the lightning protection
system, we can refer to tables that give acceptable cross-sectional areas
for stainless, silicon bronze and aluminum.
|
