EMI Critical Issue for Composite Bodied Aircraft

As European aircraft manufacturer Airbus pushes ahead with its next widebody airliner program, the A350 XWB, the company has come up with an entirely new design, which raises critical issues regarding EMI. One of Airbus’s flying test-beds, an A340-300, has been fitted with an A350 XWB fuselage shell panel in place of a metal panel for flight tests. The use of composites to make the fuselage changes things, notes the A350 XWB program head. For example, metallic fuselages automatically form Faraday Cages, providing a high degree of protection against external electromagnetic interference, most usually represented by lightning. CFRP does not.This issue makes the EMI test rig particularly important, as engineers use a multifunction EMI chamber to analyze the EMI characteristics of CFRP and to test all types of high-frequency interference inside the cabin and between the outside and the inside of the fuselage.Read more in the South African Engineering News.