Numerical analysis of avionic grounding structures with surface PEEC formulation

The numerical simulation of complicated grounding structures at low frequency - from about a hundred Hertz to some MHz - is required in several cases, for instance for the modelling of direct and indirect effects of lightning on aircraft. The Partial Element Equivalent Circuit (PEEC) methodology allows the mitigation of the low frequency ill conditioning problems of the canonical Method of Moments, and also allows the excitation of the structure under analysis by direct injection of an external electrical current. This paper describes the use of a surface formulation of the PEEC methodology, including the use of an accelerated iterative solver to allow the analysis of large grounding structures.