Welcome to the IEEE EMC Society Eastern North Carolina Website

Time: 5:30 to 7:30 PM
Location: Tekelec (directions)
RSVP to: Samuel Connor  (email).

Meeting Topic: Automotive EMC

ABSTRACT:  This topic covers EMC approaches applied to automotive systems, from the conventional "legacy" systems to the latest developments in electric vehicle propulsion. There is discussion about the unique environment that automotive systems function in and how some of the methods used to meet automotive system functional requirements can determine the vehicle's EMC characteristics. Typical automotive EMC requirements are identified and examined, along with "case studies". 
Presenter: Mark Steffka   
BIO: Mark Steffka, B.S.E., M.S., is with the Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Engineering Group of General Motors (GM) Powertrain and is a faculty member of two universities in the Detroit, Michigan, area.  He has over 25 years of industry experience in the design, development, and testing of military, aerospace and automotive electronics, including power, control, and radio frequency (RF) systems.  Since 2000, he has been an adjunct lecturer at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department for the undergraduate and graduate classes on EMC, and was a Co-Principal Investigator for a United States’ National Science Foundation grant which resulted in the establishment of the campus’ EMC laboratory.  For the college’s Engineering Professional Development office he is the instructor for engineering continuing education courses on “Automotive EMC” and “Antennas”.  He is the recipient of faculty and alumni awards from the University of Michigan – Dearborn, College of Engineering and Computer Science, for his contributions to engineering education and the EMC curriculum.  At the University of Detroit – Mercy he is an adjunct professor and teaches an undergraduate and graduate engineering course on EMC.  He is a member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), has served as a session chair for the IEEE EMC Symposium and a technical session organizer for the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) World Congress.  He has been a speaker at IEEE and SAE conferences held in the United States and international locations.  His publications have covered topics on EMC, RFI, and was a co-author of the book “Automotive Electromagnetic Compatibility”. He has held an amateur radio license since 1975, with the call sign WW8MS, is a Life Member of ARRL, the National Association for Amateur Radio, and serves on the ARRL EMC Committee.      

Future Meetings...

March; No meeting scheduled (yet!): We may have a March 30th meeting with a distinguished lecturer video presentation, details are being worked on.

April; Distinguished Lecturer Omar Ramahi; Topic "What Causes radiation? or EBGs?" Tuesday April 27th, from 5:30 to 7:30pm, location is TBD.

May or June (Tentative); Dr. Bruce Archambeault; "Lossy Materials for EMI Control in the Real World". ABSTRACT: "Lossy Materials for EMI Control in the Real World" Lossy materials are often used to help suppress emissions in the last-minute and desperate hours of a failing product that is about to ship to customers for the first time. Pressure is high, and lossy materials are sometimes used blindly to find some combination of lossy material type, size, and location(s) that will allow the product to pass emissions levels and ship. This talk will focus on understanding how these materials really work, and to show examples of their use in a controlled fashion. Applications such as lossy materials on unshielded cables, lossy material under heatsinks, and lossy materials in resonant cavities will be discussed. The goal is to be able to understand how and where to use these materials, and to remove, or at least reduce, the amount of trial-and-error testing associated with their use.  BIO: Dr. Bruce Archambeault is an IBM Distinguished Engineer at IBM in Research Triangle Park, NC. He received his B.S.E.E degree from the University of New Hampshire in 1977 and his M.S.E.E degree from Northeastern University in 1981. He received his Ph. D. from the University of New Hampshire in 1997. His doctoral research was in the area of computational electromagnetics applied to real-world EMC problems.
Bio: In 1981 he joined Digital Equipment Corporation and through 1994 he had assignments ranging from EMC/TEMPEST product design and testing to developing computational electromagnetic EMC-related software tools. In 1994 he joined SETH Corporation where he continued to develop computational electromagnetic EMC-related software tools and used them as a consulting engineer in a variety of different industries. In 1997 he joined IBM in Raleigh, N.C. where he is the lead EMC engineer, responsible for EMC tool development and use on a variety of products. During his career in the U.S. Air Force he was responsible for in-house communications security and TEMPEST/EMC related research and development projects. Dr. Archambeault has authored or co-authored a number of papers in computational electromagnetics, mostly applied to real-world EMC applications. He is a past member of the Board of Directors for the IEEE EMC Society and a past Board of Directors member for the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES). He currently serves as the chair for the Technical Activities Committee of the EMC Society. He has served as a past IEEE/EMCS Distinguished Lecturer and Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility. He is the author of the book “PCB Design for Real-World EMI Control” and the lead author of the book titled “EMI/EMC Computational Modeling Handbook”.