Kampert, Erik

Maintaining compliance to electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) standards becomes an increasing challenge for the automotive industry in the course of the ongoing automation of vehicles. Novel extended design procedures and test standards are required to ensure safety of automated driving functions, particularly in an adverse electromagnetic (EM) environment. In order to keep the number of tests within a reasonable and practical limit, an evaluation framework based on virtual design methods and information drawn from legacy experiments and simulations can support the automotive industry. With this digital framework appropriate technological solutions can be identified during the pre-compliance phase and efficient experimental designs can be generated to ensure EMC compliance. Furthermore, such a framework paves the way for digital EMC twins of automated vehicles (AVs) considering the complex interrelations of AV’s (sub-)systems to accurately predict the behaviour of new AV functions in various EM environments. To this purpose, a cross-domain platform is being developed in this work as the backbone of such a virtual framework. It supports the handling, storage and processing of various datasets from EMC test campaigns, including (intentional) electromagnetic interference ((I)EMI) tests, as well as simulations of automotive devices-under-test (DUTs). The platform allows for the establishment of interconnections between various data sources and deeper analyses based on artificial intelligence (AI) methods to deduce EMC information for new developments, whilst maintaining traceability.

In a modern vehicle, the automotive wire harness forms a crucial part of the sensor signal and power distribution system. It is thus important to understand the impact of electromagnetic interference on such harness, in particular its dependence on layout with respect to an incoming electromagnetic wave. The research presented here investigates the induced common-mode and differential-mode currents in various wire harness layouts, as well as the dependence on both grounding and on the harness design involving an unshielded twisted or untwisted pair. The results indicate that for harness layouts with a substantial component along the electric field directions, such current levels can reach up to those that disrupt automotive sensor communication.