High Added-Value EM Shielding by Using Metal-Foams: Experimental and Numerical Characterization

Metal foams represent an extremely versatile novel class of materials which mechanical properties, not yet completely investigated, promise new challenging perspectives in many application fields. In this work, their use in electromagnetic (EM) applications is investigated. More specifically, the realization of high added-value electromagnetic shields has been considered and experimental Shielding Effectiveness (SE) measurements have been performed, demonstrating very good performance. In order to allow the design of metal foam EM shields, however, their numerical simulation is mandatory; because of the intrinsic heterogeneity of foams, among the several available techniques, the Finite Difference Tine Domain (FDTD) methods appears to be the most appropriate candidate. An extremely accurate metal foam model is presented and preliminary SE numerical estimation performed by using a state-of-the-art parallel variable-mesh FDTD code.