EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC

APPLICATIONS, INC

Full Wave EM Simulation for

Lightning Protection

Tim McDonald, PhD

[email protected]
Phone: +1 (303) 324-7532
www.ema3d.com
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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Electro Magnetic Applications, Inc.

• Electromagnetic environmental effects simulation and

testing since 1978
• Rod Perala, president, has been with EMA since 1978
• Commercial software development and consulting

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

EMA History

• Over 30 years of software

development, consulting,
contract R&D
• Lightning Testing
• ESD
• EMC/EMI
• Measurement and
Simulation
• F-14, F-18, Pershing II,
Space Shuttle, Sikorsky,
GPS Multipath, Cargo Lifter
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APPLICATIONS, INC

Lightning Testing: Space Shuttle

Solid Rocket Booster (SRB)

• EMA designed test

generators and facility
built in Wendover,
Utah
• Tested several SRB
components
• Photo shows testing of
first stage

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Lightning Test Facility in

Wendover, Utah

• Wire grid
peaking
capacitor
• 1 million volt
Marx
generator
• 500 KA
current bank

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Static Electricity:
Charging of Aircraft by Dust
• Iraqi dust storm
• P-Static effects on
aircraft electronic
systems have been
observed
• EMA
• Developed a description of
the dust environment
• Determined charging rates
of dust on aircraft by
measurement
• Determined discharge
currents by analysis and
measurements
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APPLICATIONS, INC

Measurement of Dust Charging of

Aircraft Surface Materials
Example test setup Illumination of test sample

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APPLICATIONS, INC

Design and Simulation of Anechoic

Chambers (Lehman Chambers)

Combination of carbon loaded

pyramids and ferrite tiles
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APPLICATIONS, INC

Anechoic Chambers: Comparison of

Measured and Computed Results

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APPLICATIONS, INC

Triggered Lightning Simulation on 265m

long Airship

Lightning protection
strips

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APPLICATIONS, INC

Electric Field Enhancement Factors

Axial Field

E xa  10 kV m .

90 kV/m

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Pershing II Accident Investigation

• In 1985, a PII caught fire

during assembly on its mobile
launcher in Germany
• EMA determined the cause to
be static charging of motor
case while inside its steel
shipping canister
• An external static discharge
induced a discharge inside
the propellant with the
Kevlar motor case
• Demonstrated by extensive
analysis and full scale testing

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Railroad EM Effects
• In 1997, EMA first became involved
in railroad electromagnetic effects
• Lightning protection of railroad
signal systems
 Faraday cage implementation inside
bungalows
 Development of a new arrester

• Interference of power lines with

railroad signal systems

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

EMA Today
Lockheed Martin’s Orion EM Team
Lightning and space plasma charging effects for returning humans
to space beyond low earth orbit.

GMD Ground Based Interceptor Team

Member of incumbent GMD team working on GBI upgrade
and maintenance through its lifecycle.

Civilian Aviation and Emerging Technologies

EMA has worked on lightning, HEMP, and HIRF qualification of
civilian aircraft as well as supporting internal prime contractor and
government R&D.

Worldwide Software Sales and Training

EMA has successful software sales worldwide aiding E3 and EMC
engineers in aerospace, maritime, and automotive applications.

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Active Certification/Design Projects

(Lightning)
• Super Medium Helicopter
• Regional Jet
• Midsize Business Jet
• Two Narrow-body, Medium-
range Jet Airliners (1 active, 1 in
negotiation)
• Missile Defense Agency Rocket
• Orion NASA Crew Vehicle
• Low-wing Turboprop Trainer

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

EMA Committee Participation

• SAE Technical Committee AE-2 Lightning

 All facets of aircraft lightning strikes and its effects on aircraft-design, testing, measurement,
procedures, and in-service experience.
 Rod Perala was on the SAE AE2 from 1981 to 2001, where he helped to develop lightning
qualification waveforms and standards that are in use today.
 Since 2001, Greg Rigden of EMA has been on the committee and is chairman of the
environment subcommittee to update the lightning environment standards to conform to new
research results.

• SAE Technical Committee AE-4R HIRF

 All facets of HIRF effects on aircraft-design, testing, measurement, procedures, and in-service
experience.
 Rod Perala was on the SAE AE4R from its beginning in about 1986 until about 1996.
 This committee developed the original environments and certification approaches and test
methods for HIRF certification.
 EMA also did some specialty tasks for the FAA related to HIRF risk assessment, which resulted
in some FAA technical reports.

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

The Lightning Problem

• Design Phase: Need analysis to support system design

before any testable prototypes exist.
• Certification Phase: Need an experimentally validated
model to reduce test costs and ensure viability in all
possible scenarios.
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APPLICATIONS, INC

The Lightning Problem

• The lightning levels are specified for the entire

system
• There are no test levels for individual elements
• Lightning effects depend on current distribution in
the entire system

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

However . . .

• The system may not yet exist for testing

• If it does exist, full-scale lightning testing is expensive
• Full-scale testing is complicated by the ground plane and return
conductor system effects (ARP 5583 requires additional simulation
support to full-scale testing)
• A limited set of attachment scenarios can be practically assessed
• Design changes after the test are a problem

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Status Quo Approaches

• Use the test results of a previous project

• Use poorly-suited analytical methods with a great
deal of margin

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Status Quo Issues

Use the test results of a previous project:

• The materials (use of composites) and bonding design

may be significantly different between designs

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Current Generation of
Computational Electromagnetics

• Mature codes (continuously under development

since 1978 and applied to hundreds of systems)
• Optimized for system level electromagnetics
including lightning in complex systems

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Simulation Work Flow

Original CAD CEM CAD Coupon
drawing Environment Testing

Experimental test
From Mech. Eng. Designers Imports CAD formats levels by analysis

3D CEM Harness Sim. Actionable

Results
• Actual Transient Levels
• Model Validation
• Design Requirements
• Tailored Test Levels
Solves down to • Design Evaluation
Transients/levels at • Certification Support
20 mm resolution pins/interfaces
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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Composite Materials

• Complex material modeling challenges with individual

composite layers and interaction with fasteners

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Understanding Composite Test

Coupon Properties

• EMA has developed methods to measure individual layer

anisotropic conductivity properties
• A simulate-measure-simulate approach ensures a complete
understanding of current distribution in each coupon
scenario
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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Experimentally Validated
Approach

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Representing Composite Joints in

Simulations

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Validation

• EMA has achieved a successful validation of simplified boxes

• This lowers the cost versus a full wing validation and allows for use of
simulation results in certification
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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

EMA Validation Heritage

• EMA has been doing this since one of the first composite fuel
tanks was placed in SAAB Gripen Fighter
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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Validation Heritage

• MD-80 Simulation Compared to Test Data

• High degree of correlation allowed for IEL
certification of MD-90 by simulation
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APPLICATIONS, INC

Recent Validation

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Fuel System validation Object

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APPLICATIONS, INC

Results

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Integrated Harness Simulation

• Lightning: MHARNESS gives transients at the pin

level. Necessary for accurate results.

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Simulation Platform Size

• EMA3D integrated with MHARNESS is available as a

cluster version to operate in parallel over many nodes
• Extremely efficient scaling on computational clusters
• Successfully used to simulate entire aircraft and large
systems
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APPLICATIONS, INC

Lightning Redistribution

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Current on Ribs

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APPLICATIONS, INC

Pipe and Cable Currents

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Wind Turbine Simulation Example

CAD imported from STEP format

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APPLICATIONS, INC

Cables

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

New Cables in EMA3D CAD

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

FDTD Cartesian Mesh (50 mm)

Meshing operation takes < 5 minutes

All materials are steel
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APPLICATIONS, INC

Cable Cross Section

Cable 1 Cable 2 Cable 3

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

EMA3D Cable Cross Section Tool

EMA3D has the unique
capability of Co-simulating
with a full-featured
Transmission Line Solver
•Ability to quickly calculate
the accurate capacitance and
inductance matrix for cable
cross-section
•Easy drag and drop cable
cross section tool

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Material Library

EMA3D includes built-in sample

properties for standard types of
cables
•Diameter
•Resistance
•Transfer impedance
parameters

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Computational Simulation

CEM simulation completed in about two hours

•Gradual permittivity scaling speeds up time-domain
simulation by a factor or more than ten
•Built-in parallel simulation capabilities allow for speed
up over 100 times on multi-core workstations and
computational clusters
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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Magnetic Field Slice Probe

Lightning
Channel

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Log of H-field normal to page is proportional to color
 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Current Density Animation

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Source Waveform

•The first case will be the standard 200 kA Component A

Waveform 1 (~ 5 μs peak, slow fall)

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Waveform 1 Overall Cable Bundle

Current

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Waveform 1 Individual Pin

Current

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Waveform 1 Individual Pin Voltage

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

DC Simulation

Gradual permittivity scaling allows for a time-domain

calculation of a ramp up to DC as described.
•Simulation completed in a little over an hour
•Impossible to complete with other time-domain solvers

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Ramp to 800 A DC Simulation

Results: Pin Currents

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Summary

• Computation electromagnetics
is critical for model complex
system design and verification
• New simulation techniques
interoperate with CAD
• Mature validation heritage
means that the results can be
trusted
• Applicable to wind turbines
and related systems

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 EMA ELECTRO MAGNETIC
APPLICATIONS, INC

Contact us with any questions!

Tim McDonald, PhD

11 October 2012
[email protected]
Phone: +1 (303) 324-7532
www.ema3d.com
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