Scaled measurements of mode-stirred HIRF penetration into an aircraft fuselage

HIRF stands for high intensity radiated fields, and includes all man-made sources of electromagnetic energy. Certification is necessary to ensure that on-board electronics are sufficiently hardened to withstand all likely electromagnetic threats without upsets. HIRF certification involves two steps. First, the fields local to the on-board electronic systems that have penetrated into the fuselage are predicted using numerical methods for the anticipated incident HIRF fields. Then, the electronics systems can be monitored for upsets while being subjected to those same local fields in the laboratory. In this paper, measurements of the electric field penetration into a scaled fuselage-like body were performed at four different locations as a function of mode stirrer orientation for over 10,000 frequencies. These measurements will be used to validate FDTD predictions and statistical analysis.