Aircraft High Intensity Radio Frequency Qualification – New, Fast Stochastic Power Flow Benchmark versus FDTD Simulation

Electromagnetic (EM) field simulation is essential to aircraft design for hgh intensity radio frequency (HIRF) qualification under RTCA DO-160. While a number of numerical full wave simulation tools have been shown capable of predicting HIRF test environments, model building is complex and solve times are typically long and/or expensive. Newer, stochastic power flow (SPF) methods are a mesh-free, wave physics alternative which greatly simplifies model building and solves O[1,000x] faster than numerical codes. SPF formulations developed by the authors have recently been implemented in a new class of EM cable - field modeling software application; Stochastica. This paper documents a rigorous quantitative benchmark of the fast SPF simulation software, directly comparing with finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) numerical model results for a HIRF study of the Airbus A400M engine nacelle and wiring harnesses. The benchmark also demonstrates how SPF modeling statistically encloses the high sensitivity of numerical models to small perturbations in uncertain model parameters.