Product development teams care about electromagnetic interference (EMI) and compatibility because they must. Every industry has specific electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) standards each product must meet before being released into the market.
To ensure products meet the standards, manufacturers build prototypes and send them to specialized EMI/EMC chambers for testing. According to a survey of those labs, about 50 percent of the products fail the first round of testing, and 35 percent test 3 or more iterations before passing. This process of design, build, test, and repeat is time-consuming, expensive, and frustrating to the manufacturer’s employees, leaders, and shareholders.
The process doesn’t have to be so difficult. Ansys develops simulation software that manufacturers around the world use to build designs in a virtual environment, test the designs in a variety of situations, identify problem areas, and develop fixes. All of this occurs before any money is spent on building a prototype, and it dramatically increases first-time pass rates at labs.
Ansys has two solutions for EMI/EMC simulations. This blog post is on Ansys EMC Plus. Read this blog post for information on Ansys EMC Charge.
What is Ansys EMC Plus
Formerly called Ansys EMA3D Cable, Ansys EMC Plus is a virtual platform-level electromagnetic cable modeling and simulation tool that delivers a design-to-validation workflow for EMC. It is used to model complex systems for EMI/EMC, including cables, harnesses, shielding, gaps, etc.
Ansys couples:
- Codes build on a finite difference time domain
- A multi-conductor transmission line solver
- A Nexxim transient circuit solver
The three co-simulate to allow users to model extremely complex ecosystems for electromagnetic compatibility. Users can easily pull in CAD geometry and quickly import/define all the cabling to get a solution.
Key Features
- Ability to pull in CAD geometry of large, complex models and get it up, meshed, and running very quickly
- There is short time to value
- It’s easy to modify designs
- The geometry can quickly be imported as a CAD model
- Cables can be imported in standard formats like KBL
- It delivers fast execution
- The mesh is extremely forgiving
- The three solvers mentioned above work together
- The software has been thoroughly tested and it has been used on extremely complex aircraft and spacecraft, both of which follow stringent requirements.
Customer Example – Large Complex Aircraft Model
An aircraft manufacturer planned an upgrade to much of their onboard electronics, and to do that, the company needed to get the entire aircraft recertified for lightning effects. The challenge was to minimize testing and strive to attain certification with simulation. The plane model had more than 600 cable types or cross sections to define 1,600 cable segments.
With Ansys EMC Plus software, a model was created, 2,500 probes were installed, cables were defined, and more than 24 scenarios were run over three months.
The results correlated to the test measurements, so the data has been submitted for certification. The company expected to get FAA approval.
Learn More
Want to learn more and see more examples, watch the recording of this 60-minute webinar, Build a Virtual Electromagnetic Test Environment to Ensure Product Success.
Contact us to start a conversation about how Ansys software can help you reduce manufacturing costs and speed time to market.
About the Author
Follow on Linkedin More Content by Conrad Magalis
