Ansys EMA3D Charge/Cable: Electromagnetic Interference, Radiation Ionization Effects in Spacecraft, Electrostatic Discharge, Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PE-CVD)
The growth in electrification of consumer, industrial and military/aerospace products & systems has led design teams to protect embedded electronics systems against hazards such as ESD (electrostatic discharge) and EMI (electromagnetic interference.) Product developers increasingly turn to simulation tools to capture potential electromagnetic risks earlier in the design process.
Unwanted internal and external coupling can prevent or inhibit testing certifications. EMA3D Cable’s capabilities start with: Shielding effectiveness analysis, High Intensity Radiated Fields (HIRF) and cable coupling, EMI crosstalk between cables, Current return network optimization, Cable signal integrity, Lightning and EMP coupling to equipment interfaces
Ansys EMA3D Charge analyzes charging and discharging phenomena. It uses time domain solvers to simulate electric arcing in air, surface and internal charging, particle transport and dielectric breakdown. It helps you assess and manage risks associated with excessive charge build-up in your system, which can result in material degradation, arcing and electromagnetic interference (EMI) in harsh radiation environments or high voltage systems.
Performs accurate charging analysis to determine when, where and how an electric arc problem is created, as the undesirable EMI effects and material degradation are very difficult to anticipate.
Predicts charge accumulation on satellites and space platforms – a complex task that requires adept knowledge of plasma and material physics.
Prevents catastrophic failure of satellites due to discharge events, which must be tackled in the design phase of the project, as testing in space is nearly impossible.
Manages the consequences of electrostatic discharges in air and solid dielectrics, which historically requires numerous and complex simulation tools, with steep learning curves.
Air breakdown in high-voltage systems takes advantage of a finite-element time difference method and a nonlinear air chemistry module to model arcing at various air densities and humidities.
Surface Charging in low and high energy plasma environments, as well as through triboelectrification, is possible using highly optimized charge balance equation solvers.
Internal charging of solid materials from high-energy particle fluxes leverages the coupling of a 3D particle transport source and a full-wave electromagnetic finite element method (FEM).
Coupled charging simulations take advantage of the charge balance equations solvers, the FEM and the 3D particle transport tool to self-consistently solve the 3D electric fields generated from a surface charging problem.
Dielectric breakdown in solid dielectric materials is simulated once the local fields exceed the dielectric strength of a given material, using the coupling of the FEM with the 3D particle source and a stochastic tree model.
Predict Charged Plasma Behaviors With EMA3D Charge and its Particle-in-Cell Solver
Charged particles and their non-linear discharge characteristics have been especially difficult to model and simulate accurately. Ansys EMA3D Charge provides the capabilities needed to simulate and predict charged plasma behaviors with particle-in-cell (PIC) solver technology. By engaging simulation with the parallelized PIC solver of EMA3D Charge, you can visualize, predict, and monitor plasma behavior accurately and speedily. Not only can you save significantly on the time and cost of current projects, but you can better prepare and design future products through virtual prototyping, predictive accuracy, and EM modeling. You can also model collisions between particles of the same species or between different species.
Additionally, the PIC solver is fully coupled to a full-wave finite element method (FEM) solver for electrodynamics, which enables particles to interact with EM fields and conversely for EM fields to get updated based on the dynamic plasma distribution. PIC and FEM solvers can be coupled to the boundary element method (BEM). This capability allows for macroparticles from the PIC solver to be absorbed by the material and for the BEM solver to update surface charges and potentials. The potentials from the BEM are then used as boundary conditions for the FEM so that EM fields can be updated accordingly.
Ionizing Radiation From The Sun Will Damage Our Spacecraft?
PIC solver technology has it covered with modeling capabilities for EMI and radiation ionization effects.Spacecraft surface charging is modeled using the BEM approach, which uses analytical descriptions of plasma interactions with the material surface. For example, a spacecraft moving through plasma plays a significant role in differential charging between the front and the back of the spacecraft. A plasma wake, which is a low-density region behind the spacecraft, needs to be modeled for debris-capture applications or docking routines and this wake can only be modeled accurately in 3D. In addition, plasma sheaths form close to surfaces at the time of equilibrium. Plasma sheaths are boundary regions that shield the electric fields and consequentially alter the charging at the surface.
These phenomenological effects are consequences of plasma interactions with ambient fields and are merely approximated in a BEM method, which has limits in its ability to calculate electric fields in relatively low-energy, dense plasmas found in low Earth orbit (LEO) or interplanetary orbits.
Ansys EMA3D Charge coupling with other solvers
By engaging PIC solver technology, you experience deep integration at the physics level (coupling EMA3D Charge with Fluent or Chemkin-Pro) and the user interface and workflow level (integrating the software into STK).
EMA3D Charge can also be integrated with Ansys Rocky particle dynamics simulation software or Ansys EMA3D Cable to explore further physics-based simulation. Similarly, to visualize your project in realistic settings as you can in STK, you can employ EMA3D Charge in conjunction with Ansys Discovery 3D simulation software or the Ansys ModelCenter model-based systems engineering (MBSE) platform.
Ansys EMA3D Cable
Ansys EMA3D Cable is a 3D Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) solver with an integrated multi-conductor transmission line solver. The two electromagnetic solvers co-simulate to allow for a complex cable harness to be accurately modeled inside complex geometry, such as an electronic device, a piece of machinery, an automobile or an aircraft.
Ansys EMA3D Cable is well-suited for simulations addressing electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), High Intensity Radiated Fields (HIRF), and lightning requirements early in the program before physical prototypes are complete. Users can specify realistic system signals as a source on cables or shields. The source may also be at the platform or environment level.
Using Ansys EMA3D Cable, enable us to analyse:
- Radiated coupling to cables
- Radiated emissions from cables
- Coupling through shields
- EMI cross-talk between cables
- Current return network optimization
- Coupling from static discharges
- Cable signal integrity
- Lightning coupling to equipment interfaces
- HIRF fields and cable coupling
- Thin material algorithm with Magnetic Materials
- Frequency-dependent material properties
- FDTD sub-grid modeling
- FDTD with solid bodies
Ansys EMA3D Cable’s FDTD approach is the only EM tool capable of capturing the detail of highly complex platforms such as entire aerospace, automotive, ship or energy systems down to individual electronics interfaces in a computationally accessible manner.
