When emitters of electromagnetic energy are operated in the vicinity of sensitive components, the electric field at the component location must be kept below a certain level in order to prevent the component from being damaged, or in the case of electro-explosive devices, initiating. The V-Curve is a convenient way to set the electric field limit because it requires minimal information about the problem configuration. In this report we will discuss the basis for the V-Curve. We also consider deviations from the original V-Curve resulting from inductive versus capacitive antennas, increases in directivity gain for long antennas, decreases in input impedance when operating in a bounded region, and mismatches dictated by transmission line losses. In addition, we consider mitigating effects resulting from limited antenna sizes.
This report presents analytic transmission line models for calculating the shielding effectiveness of two common calibration standard cables. The two cables have different canonical aperture types, which produce the same low frequency coupling but different responses at resonance. The dominant damping mechanism is produced by the current probe loads at the ends of the cables, which are characterized through adaptor measurements. The model predictions for the cables are compared with experimental measurements and good agreement between the results is demonstrated. This setup constitutes a nice repeatable geometry that nevertheless exhibits some of the challenges involved in modeling non-radio frequency geometries.
The voltage on a single-turn loop inside an enclosure characterizes the enclosure shielding effectiveness against a lightning insult. In this paper, the maximum induced voltage on a single-turn loop inside an enclosure from lightning coupling to a metal enclosure wall is expressed in terms of two multiplicative factors: (A) the normalized enclosure wall peak penetration ratio (i.e., ratio of the peak interior electric field multiplied by the sheet conductance to the exterior magnetic field) and (B) the DC voltage on an ideal optimum coupling loop assuming the ideal penetration ratio of one. As a result of the decomposition, the variation of the peak penetration ratio (A) for different coupling mechanisms is found to be small; the difference in the maximum voltage hence arises from the DC voltage on the optimum coupling loop (B). Maximum voltages on an optimum coupling loop inside a finite cylinder enclosure for direct attachment and a lightning line source at different distances from the enclosure are given in Table 3.
In this paper, fusing of a metallic conductor is studied by judiciously using the solution of the one-dimensional heat equation, resulting in an approximate method for determining the threshold fusing current. The action is defined as an integration of the square of the wire current over time. The burst action (the action required to completely vaporize the material) for an exploding wire is then used to estimate the typical wire gapping action (involving wire fusing), from which gapping time can be estimated for a gapping current greater than a factor of two over the fusing current. The test data are used to determine the gapped length as a function of gapping current and to show, for a limited range, that the gapped length is inversely proportional to gapping time. The gapping length can be used as a signature of the fault current level in microelectronic circuits.
This report estimates inductively-coupled energy to a low-impedance load in a loop-to-loop arrangement. Both analytical models and full-wave numerical simulations are used and the resulting fields, coupled powers and energies are compared. The energies are simply estimated from the coupled powers through approximations to the energy theorem. The transmitter loop is taken to be either a circular geometry or a rectangular-loop (stripline-type) geometry that was used in an experimental setup. Simple magnetic field models are constructed and used to estimate the mutual inductance to the receiving loop, which is taken to be circular with one or several turns. Circuit elements are estimated and used to determine the coupled current and power (an equivalent antenna picture is also given). These results are compared to an electromagnetic simulation of the transmitter geometry. Simple approximate relations are also given to estimate coupled energy from the power. The effect of additional loads in the form of attached leads, forming transmission lines, are considered. The results are summarized in a set of susceptibility-type curves. Finally, we also consider drives to the cables themselves and the resulting common-to-differential mode currents in the load.
In this paper, linear lightning diffusion into a Faraday cage is studied. The high-altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and nearby lightning are used as examples for a uniform field drive and the direct-strike lightning adjacent to the enclosure is used as a worst-case configuration of a line source excitation. The time-derivative of the magnetic field (HDOT) inside the enclosure for a uniform field drive with a decaying exponential waveform is analyzed and numerically determined. The physically relevant time-derivative of the magnetic field and voltage characterizations of an optimum coupling loop inside the enclosure for a decaying exponential waveform in a worst-case line source coupling configuration are numerically determined. First, the impulse and the unit step response peaks are shown to bound the decaying exponential peaks. Next, a simple fit function for a decaying exponential peak HDOT or a voltage bound for a single-turn loop inside the Faraday cage is constructed from peak responses of the unit step and impulse limiting cases. Excitations used are from (1) a uniform field drive of HEMP or nearby lightning and (2) a line source of direct-strike lightning. Comparisons of HDOT and voltage bounds of the fit function and actual numerical evaluations are given in Table 3.
A lightning flash consists of multiple, high-amplitude but short duration return strokes. Between the return strokes is a lower amplitude, continuing current which flows for longer duration. If the walls of a Faraday cage are made of thin enough metal, the continuing current can melt a hole through the metal in a process called burnthrough. A subsequent return stroke can couple energy through this newly-formed hole. This LDRD is a study of the protection provided by a Faraday cage when it has been compromised by burnthrough. We initially repeated some previous experiments and expanded on them in terms of scope and diagnostics to form a knowledge baseline of the coupling phenomena. We then used a combination of experiment, analysis and numerical modeling to study four coupling mechanisms: indirect electric field coupling, indirect magnetic field coupling, conduction through plasma and breakdown through the hole. We discovered voltages higher than those encountered in the previous set of experiments (on the order of several hundreds of volts).