Power Balance Solver Enhanced by an Experimental Absorption Cross-Section Database

We propose the development of a user-friendly software tool for estimating the electric field distributions within spacecraft enclosures based on the Power Balance (PwB) method and enhanced by a database of experimentally determined Absorption Cross-Sections (ACS) of common equipment, components and cables.The software will be built around an already developed PwB solver that determines the statistical properties of fields for an arbitrary enclosure or multiple adjoined enclosures filled with a variety of objects and containing multiple apertures of varying dimension. The effectiveness of the PwB solver will be augmented by a user-friendly GUI that allows users to interactively define cavities through point and click operations in an already commercially successful product. The cavities can either be canonical in nature or based upon high fidelity CAD models of the spacecraft enclosures. A critical aspect of accurately predicting the statistical distribution of electric fields in a cavity is how the cavities are loaded with lossy structures. Without properly accounting for such lossy structures, results from simple PwB approaches can be off by 10rsquo;s of dB. Unfortunately, the Absorption Cross-Sections (ACS) of common components found in aerospace platforms are not readily available to analysts. As part of the proposed effort, the ACS of items commonly found in spacecraft enclosures (electronic boards, cables, avionics equipment), as well as the properties of the enclosurersquo;s walls and seams will be characterized via measurements and provided in a database accessible through the software toolrsquo;s GUI.nbsp;Such an enhanced PwB solver couldnbsp;tackle virtually any practical cavity problem, within the applicability boundaries of the PwB method.