Spacecraft Charging
Spacecraft Charging
EMA3D® includes advanced CAE tools to extend NASCAP-2K and provide spacecraft charging analysis for plasma interaction and EMC characterization in space. Many US companies rely on NASCAP-2K, but find the CAD and CAE tools, such as meshes, to be cumbersome and underdeveloped.
EMA3D gives the ability to simplify, modify, and defeature geometry to prepare for NASCAP-2K simulation. The EMA3D tools can then be used to assign the plasma interaction material properties. Then advanced meshing creates a valid conformal BEM mesh that imports cleanly into NASCAP-2K. Finally, the results can be parsed with EMA3D or further simulated using EMA3D’s tools to propagate discharges to cables or antennas.
The following gives an example of the process.
Capsule CAD
The example below shows a spacecraft from a internet-available CAD download. As you can see, the model is not yet defeautured and is not appropriate for NASCAP modeling yet.
Simplified, repaired and de-featured using EMA3D
The defeaturing is advanced, with automatic wizards and user-friendly tools.
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BEM Mesh in EMA3D
Next, you can create a BEM mesh that is high quality and captures all the important elements of the geometry.
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Opens Directly in NASCAP, with Materials Included
This allows the plasma engineer to take advantage of the good parts of NASCAP and omit the parts that are not advanced. The materials in this example are for illustration and are not realistic.
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NASCAP Sample Results
One can view the results in NASCAP or export them to EMA3D. Further, more processing such as discharge coupling can be performed in EMA3D using the FDTD EM solver.
EMA3D FDTD Mesh
The EMA3D FDTD mesh of the same geometry is shown below. This is a general solver that can couple fields and waves as necessary to determine the threat to systems.
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