Efficient Electromagnetic Analysis of Large and Complex Structures

• Forschungsstelle: COST
• Projektnummer: C03.0054
• Projekttitel Englisch: Efficient Electromagnetic Analysis of Large and Complex Structures

Schlüsselwörter (Englisch)

Electromagnetic compatibility; numerical simulations; large systems; complex systems; numerical electromagnetics code; parallel computing

Forschungsprogramme (Englisch)

COST-Action 286 - Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) in Diffused Communication Systems

Kurzbeschreibung (Englisch)

This project aims to develop an optimized parallel version of NEC-2, with extended capabilities in dealing with large and complex structures. In particular, the new code will be enhanced with features for the special treatment of highly resonant structures, time-domain transient analysis and accurate surface representation with wire-grid models. The developed code will be implemented on two parallel distributed computers of EPFL. The project has been approved and fully suppoerted by the management committee of the COST Action 286, and it will be carried out in close collaboration with partners of the Action and coordinated with other activities of the Action's Working group 2. All the developments and theoretical derivations will be validated using experimental data which will be obtained making use of the unique possibilities offered by the VERIFY Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse Simulator belonging to the Swiss Defense Procurement Agency, partner of the project. The experimental activities of the project will be carried out using a common test structure which will be defined within the COST Action.

Partner und Internationale Organisationen (Englisch)

AT, BE, HR, FI, FR, DE, HU, IT, MT, NL, PL, ES, SE, CH, UK

Abstract (Englisch)

This project is performed within the COST Action 286 'Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) in Diffused Communication Systems'. The objective of this research project is to develop an enhanced simulation code, based on the Method of Moments, capable of analyzing in an efficient way electrically large and complex structures. The developed code will be made available to research scientists and engineers through an internet site. The development is based on NEC (Numerical Electromagnetics Code), a widely-used software for electromagnetic analysis. NEC is a user-oriented computer code based on the method of moments and written in FORTRAN for the analysis of the electromagnetic response of antennas and other metal structures. It has been extensively used with great success for radio communications testing as well as antenna design and EMC. However, its application to large systems presents three seemingly insolvable problems: (1) the computation time and memory requirements are prohibitive, despite the increased performance of personal computers; (2) body-fitted wire-grid representations of metallic surfaces yield inaccurate simulation results; recent studies have shown that such a representation is accurate only for rectangular grids; and (3) the representation of a spectrum having many resonances (as it occurs when analyzing large and complex structures) requires a large number of points so that none of these resonances are missed. During the first year of the project, we established a physical interpretation of the Equal Area Rule (EAR) and we derived a new formula to define the parameters of a body-fitted wire-grid model of a metallic structure. We also introduced an adaptive sampling method using the so-called Blumer index in the Numerical Electromagnetics Code (NEC). The proposed method is particularly efficient for the analysis of electrically large and/or highly resonant structures. Furthermore, Parallel NEC has been successfully tested versus experimental results obtained by one of our partners (Bosch Corp.). During the second year, we designed and built a complex metallic structure. In collaboration with the NEMP Labor in Spiez. Using the verify EMP simulator, we carried out a measurement campaign to obtain the electrid field distribution inside the metallic structure. A NEC model of the metallic structure was created using the criteria developed during the first year of the project. Several simulations were carried out using parallel NEC. The numerical results were compared with the data obtained from the measurement campaign yielding satisfactory results. Additional data obtained from one of our partners (Bosch Corp.) were also used in comparisons. Finally, the parallel NEC website was updated to reflect the latest achievements.

Datenbankreferenzen (Englisch)

Swiss Database: COST-DB of the State Secretariat for Education and Research Hallwylstrasse 4 CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland Tel. [phone] Swiss Project-Number: C03.0054