One appraisal of composite shielding

Weight is at a premium when designing for space applications. Equipment housings must be as light as possible and still meet both structural and electromagnetic shielding requirements. The favorable strength to weight properties of composite materials are well known. To reduce the weight of space avionics equipment, Honeywell initiated a program to examine the suitability of composite materials, for electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding. The composite material investigated was an epoxy resin, filled 40% by weight with carbon fibers. The volume resistivity of the composite material was estimated to be 100 Ω-cm. The results of this investigation show that for some applications, composite materials may be used for EMI shielding without degrading EMI performance