Modelling the Woven Structures with Inserted Conductive Yarns Coated with Magnetron Plasma and Testing Their Shielding Effectiveness

The paper proposes the analytic modelling of flexible textile shields made of fabrics with inserted conductive yarns and metallic plasma coating in order to calculate their electromagnetic shielding effectiveness (EMSE). This manufacturing process is highly innovative, since copper plasma coating improves EMSE on the fabrics with inserted conductive yarns of stainless steel and silver with 10–15 dB in the frequency range of 0.1–1000 MHz, as shown by the measured EMSE values determined according to the standard ASTM ES-07 via the Transverse Electromagnetic (TEM) cell. On the other hand, modelling of EMSE for such conductive flexible shields gives an insight on estimating EMSE in the design phase of manufacturing the shield, based on its geometric and electrical parameters. An analytic model was proposed based on the sum of EMSE of the fabric with inserted conductive yarns and EMSE of the copper coating. The measurement results show close values to the proposed analytic model, especially in case of fabric with conductive yarns having stainless steel content.