Electromagnetic and circuit simulation models for aircraft electrical wiring

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Electrification of air transportation pushes aircraft manufacturers such as BA to develop state-of-the-art tools and techniques to achieve certification more rapidly. One of these tools is numerical simulation, in particular real-time simulators coupled with hardware. This approach allows testing the integration of various components rapidly and at low cost, without having to develop full-scale mock-ups. One weak point of current simulation models is the power wires. In aircrafts, bundles of wires called "harnesses" follow complicated pathways, and the conducting parts of the fuselage used as current return path. This gives rise to complicated electromagnetic behavior that requires advanced modeling tools to produce wiring models. This problem can be solved by using several simulation tools that work fine individually, but which have never been coupled together. Starting from a cleaned CAD representation of harnesses routes plus conductors' specifications, one can use the S-PEEC method (Galileo EMT software) in order to generate frequency-dependent circuit parameters in the form of vector fitting functions, which in turn become inputs to Matlab/Simulink-based power circuit simulators (this passage represent a substantial R&D effort). Finally, in order to get closer to a real-time version of the model, an exploration of the possibilities to use hardware acceleration of the computations will be realized. The whole process will be automated through a computational workflow. Results will be extensively validated with experimental measurements performed on mock-ups of various level of complexity. The project will help all partners invovled to increase their ability to model complex electrical systems, and at the same time, that will increase their competitiveness on the market.