Lightning Protection Garments

Project Goal: Design a mannequin simulating human electrical properties that monitors current, temperature and voltage passing through the heart area.

Zoltar has developed lightning protection garments that reduce the risk of lightning-related deaths across the globe. For testing to verify performance, they require a mannequin that accurately measures the amount of current entering the heart area. The Team designed a mannequin that replicates the properties of a human and measures electricity entering the heart.

The plastic mannequin is wrapped in semi-conductive tape to simulate the electrical resistance of human skin. Inside the chest cavity, a ceramic rod imitates the electrical resistance of the heart. The rod sits in a current transformer with temperature and current sensors. The sensors are connected to a high-speed, high-bandwidth data acquisition system, or DAQ, that acquires data every 50 nanoseconds.

The DAQ transfers and stores the data on a Raspberry Pi. Users can save the sampled data to a USB drive, as well as display the data on a graph on the user interface. This data is used to verify the effectiveness of the protection garments.