Coupling Analysis Under Lightning Indirect Effects for Cable Bundles with Different Ground Plates in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

It is increasingly common in aerospace industries to take advantage of novel composite materials in their manufacturing processes to improve performance and reduce costs. Obtaining the electromagnetic (EM) characterization of these materials or a combination of them is essential to ensure safety and EM compatibility. In this paper, a laminate of the central fuselage of an aircraft developed at INTA is recreated. This aircraft is called MILANO and it is mostly made of Carbon Fiber Composite (CFC). The same material is used for the laminate. Besides, another metallic plate is built in order to compare the performance of the former one with respect to a Perfect Electric Conductor (PEC). The main goal of this work is studying the coupling between the cable bundles embedded in the MILANO and how is this affected by the different materials of the ground plate (metal and CFC). Two kind of tests are carried out: S-parameters measurents and injection of Lightning Indirect Effect (LIE) waveforms. Sparameters results are then obtained through simulation too and compared with both the metallic and the CFC sample.