Characterization of the Shielding Effectiveness of Composite Materials Using Electromagnetic Methods Covering a Wide Frequency Range

Composite materials are being widely used in the automotive industry where they are progressively replacing metallic materials as structural parts for being robust and lightweight. Their complexity, often leading to lots of unknown behavioral effects when placed near the electronic systems present in vehicles, should be studied and treated. In the automotive industry, the shielding effectiveness of these materials should be considered as the most important parameter to be known in advance. Faurecia, one of the world's largest leading automotive suppliers, sought to assess the shielding effectiveness of their product such as dashboards and door trims. Their objective was to enhance the shielding effectiveness, thereby ensuring superior isolation and protection of electronic systems against electromagnetic interferences (EMI). Thus, this paper presents a novel method for characterizing the shielding effectiveness of various composites using two electromagnetic methods to cover a wide frequency range, starting from 10 Hz up to 8 GHz. The first method, based on loop antennas, was used to cover the low frequency range starting from 10 Hz up to 120 MHz. Frequencies between 100 kHz and 1.5 GHz were not discussed in this paper due to the numerous existing studies in this frequency range, using coaxial transmission cell. The second method, employed for frequencies higher than 1.5 GHz, consists of ultra-wideband antennas (Vivaldi).