Stochastic approach to evaluate the shielding effectiveness of composite materials loaded with randomly oriented helices

Abstract

Abstract This letter proposes a method to calculate the expected value of the shielding effectiveness of a composite material slab, including a planar array of randomly oriented metal helices as chiral particles. Helix‐loaded concrete composite materials are advantageous for electromagnetic interference shielding applications. While planar periodic arrays of chiral particles have been extensively studied, this research discusses a non‐periodic array in which the helical particle axis direction in each unit cell is random. This method estimates the slab's shielding effectiveness by defining it as a random variable expanded into three independent basis‐like functions. Comparisons with full‐wave simulations show acceptable agreement across a wide frequency range, with a total RMS error of 0.9 dB. This study additionally includes an experimental measurement to validate the proposed method. This technique provides the initial step in developing an analytical method to analyse and estimate the transmitted power of general structures using a stochastic approach. Examples include concrete composites containing randomly distributed helical steel particles with significant shielding effectiveness.

Keywords

• arrays
• composite materials
• electromagnetic compatibility
• electromagnetic shielding
• mathematical analysis
• particle reinforced composites