BENCHMARK January 2020

The Electromagnetics Issue

In the BENCHMARK January 2020 Issue, you will find out about:

• Protection Against Lightning Impacts in Aircraft: The Role of Electromagnetic Simulation
• Let’s do Better Than EDA
• Validation of Electromagnetics Simulations for Vehicle-to-Everything Applications using Measured Results
• Stochastic Challenge Problems - A Summary
• Designer Oriented Software - Is it Accurate?
• How Analysis Engineers Spend their Time
• Design of 5G mm-Wave Compatible Covers for High- End Mobile Phones
• Computational Electromagnetics for Nuclear Fusion Engineering and Design
• Insight from a NAFEMS Technical Fellow

Sometimes, editing benchmark ends up being a bit of a history lesson, not only from the perspective of some of our long-standing members and contributors slowly becoming relics of their age (steady…), but because of the topics we decide to cover every quarter. This is probably one of the most “fundamental” editions of the magazine we’ve had for a while. Researching for this editorial (I do a little bit of research each time, y’know) felt like a cross between a high-school history project, and, well, a primary-school history project. Not that I’d know, mind you. To my father’s eternal disappointment, I never studied history beyond the very basics, as my teenage superiority complex deemed it far too ancient and irrelevant. Sorry, Jim.

Anyway, I digress. Electromagnetics. Faraday. Ampere. Thales of Miletus (oh yeah). James Clerk Maxwell. Volta. Ohm. It’s like a “who’s who” of units of electrical measurement. Apart from Maxwell, who was, well, just another one of us Scotsmen who basically invented the world we allow you to inhabit. And Miletus, who sounds like a camping equipment store. Point is, some of this stuff is so fundamental that we can’t talk about other things without referencing the scientists involved in it. And that, my friend, is what I call fundamental with a capital F.

So, given that a lot of what you guys do as engineers involves electricity and measurement (in fact, is that not about all you do? Incredibly simple, when you get down to it, really), electromagnetics is an area of great interest to the simulation world. Plus, magnets are fun, and lightning is really scary. There are still new terminologies and concepts springing up around the area. EDA is a term that many of you may not be thoroughly familiar with, so we’ve an excellent piece on it in this issue (electronic design automation, in case you weren’t sure).

In the more traditional area of electromagnetics, we’ve got articles on lightning effects on aircraft (terrifying), V2X (Vehicle to Everything) technology (futuristic), 5G mobile phone antenna (geeky), and nuclear reactors (powerful). Add to that a look at designer-oriented analysis tools by NAFEMS’ Technical Officer, Ian Symington, as well as a summary of the responses we received to April 2019’s stochastics challenge problems, and we’ve got another issue that’s groaning at the staples. An excellent addition to our ‘technical fellows’ series rounds things off, as well as information on how you can get involved in our upcoming series of regional conferences, which start in the spring.

I hope 2020 is an excellent year for you!

David Quinn - Editor