Electromagnetic Launch Vehicle Fairing and Acoustic Blanket Model of Received Power Using FEKO

Evaluating the impact of radio frequency transmission in vehicle fairings is important to electromagnetically sensitive spacecraft. This study employs the multilevel fast multipole method (MLFMM) from a commercial electromagnetic tool, FEKO, to model the fairing electromagnetic environment in the presence of an internal transmitter with improved accuracy over industry applied techniques. This fairing model includes material properties representative of acoustic blanketing commonly used in vehicles. Equivalent surface material models within FEKO were successfully applied to simulate the test case. Finally, a simplified model is presented using the Nicholson Ross Weir derived blanket material properties. These properties are implemented with the coated metal option to reduce the model to one layer within the accuracy of the original three layer simulation.