Static grounding for airplanes

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SHANK

SHANK

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Not familiar with static grounding for airplanes and have a job where the original design was for grounding each airplane independently using (9) 3/4" x 10" ground rods attached to a grounding point. Working with a new designer who wants to bond all points together with 2/0 bare cu, ran back to the ground bus in the panel that will be energizing the floodlights on the runway. I did not have this in my bid and as you can imagine, is not cost effective. Does anyone see any problems with the original design?
 
I do not see this as an NEC issue. I assume someone on the forum has some idea about this but my feel is that the grounding grid you had originally planned would be adequate. You are not in a hanger or running power so some other standard must be used. :smile:
 
NFPA 77 Recommended Practice on Static Electricity, is where you want to look for electrostatic hazard information. If it's truly a static electricity issue, other than lightning, any resistance less than 1 megohm to ground is essentially a dead short for static electricity. And currents are typically in the microamp range, so any wire you can buy has sufficient "ampacity". Mechanical integrity of the wire is usually the main issue and substantial abuse should be considered normal, so hefty wires are called for in practice.

Bonding for portable/fixed electrical power systems that may be attached to the aircraft, however, are entirely different.
 
Is this a military or civilian facility? That should direct you to the proper publications for codes/standards that apply. The military has handbooks that usually give good advice as to how they want things done. MIL-HDBK-419 has a wealth of grounding, bonding, and lightning protection information. You can download most of these off the internet, they are not classified or copyrighted.
 
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