Developing Alternatives to Vehicle EMC Testing

Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) measurements are always a significant challenge especially in industrial contexts where reliability and repeatability are crucial. Standards like CISPR 25 (for component-level testing) and CISPR 12 (for vehicle-level testing) are commonly used in the automotive industry, but they often require large, expensive facilities such as anechoic chambers. A major issue arises when results from component-level testing fail to correlate with those from full vehicle-level tests, often leading to unexpected failures in compliance checks. This mismatch not only complicates development cycles but also results in considerable financial losses for the automotive sector.
In this thesis, this study focuses on radiated emissions testing with the goal of establishing a meaningful and practical correlation between component-level and vehicle-level measurements. To approach this, the research first develops a series of numerical models and scaled-down physical models (at a 1:10 scale), allowing us to simulate and test them in the University of York's EMC laboratory. These models are designed to mimic real-world setups but at a size manageable for the in-house equipment. Following this, full-scale measurements are carried out in industrial environments to validate the findings and ensure real-world relevance.