The carbon fibre reinforced polymer composite structures used in aircraft as well as in wind turbine blades are very likely to be subjected to multiple lightning strikes during their operational life.Existing literature on lightning strikes on composites indicates that damage in composites is primarily due to the joule heating and the resulting high temperatures causing thermal ablation of the matrix material as well as delamination between laminates due to the resulting thermal stress.The high electrical resistance of the matrix material and the high current in a lightning strike leads to a very high joule heating.Thus,various approaches to lightning protection systems have been developed,primarily based on either an external conducting layer (co-infused conductive layer like copper mesh) or additives in the matrix materials to increase electrical conductivity of the matrix material.The objective in this paper is to understand the impact of lightning strike on a composite plate structure using a multi-physics based finite element model.A current of 100KA based on the standard wave form of the Society of Automobile Engineers (SAE) was used to numerically simulate the lightning strike on composites.