About

The ICENITE, which stands for Innovative Computational Electromagnetics & Novel Integration Technologies, is a research project funded by Technology Strategy Board (TSB) and jointly conducted by six different organizations, namely BAE systems, Bombardier, Motor Industry Research Association (MIRA), Transcendata Europe Ltd, University of Liverpool (UoL) and University of Nottingham (UoN).

This project aims at optimizing the structure of cables in bundles used in large platforms such as aeroplanes and ships, and then applying the restructured cable bundles as a new defined regulation to different application scenarios with minimal variations. It is essential that an optimized structure of cables in bundles be found because the existing cable bundles assembled randomly make it difficult to model the electromagnetic field accurately and therefore unable to predict coupling between cables. However, the new structured cable alternative would offer many breakthroughs, the most profound example of which is that a more accurate model can be obtained when using computational electromagnetic methods to analyze shielding and reduce cable coupling. As a result, future cable bundles will have lower volume, cost and weight and better immunity against electromagnetic threats, such as Lightning and high intensity radiated fields (HIRF).

To fulfil the objectives of this project, UoN and BAE systems will firstly develop computational modelling tools for representing the geometry of the cable system with sufficient accuracy, which will later be used to find the optimized structure of the cable bundles and analyse its performance. Based on this, UoL, acting as a third party, is responsible for proposing requirements of new cable systems, investigating the optimized structure of cables by testing cable bundles having varied parameters (age, for example), and finally modelling the structured cable systems by different methods and well known commercial software (such as CST Studio Suite) to verify the final outcome. For more information about the CST Studio Suite, please find at the CST home website. 

After the project is finished and the results that enable better prediction of cable coupling are obtained, the information from this project will be disseminated to the UK and European cable and connecter manufactures for aerospace and motor vehicle area in the hope that they are able to manufacture the new cable products to meet the emerging automotive and aerospace standards.

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