The GENIAL project aimed at developing a numerical methodology and a SW tool to model the current return networks (called ALEEN, ALmost Equipotential Electrical Network) installed aboard composite aircrafts. It was able to:

• input geometry and material properties of ALEEN (including also metallic structural parts of the aircraft if any) from CAD;
• accept measured data as partial characterization of ALEEN sub-parts;
• evaluate the impedance matrix of ALEEN in the frequency range DC-100 kHz, also considering the EWIS (Electrical Wiring Interconnection System) and the electromagnetic interaction with aircraft body;
• interface the above-mentioned impedance matrix with an electrical database of EWIS, in order to evaluate the impedance between any two interconnection points of EWIS.

A 3D full-wave procedure was implemented based on PEEC (Partial Element Equivalent Circuit) method. A number of improvements with respect to “standard” PEEC algorithm was implemented (e.g. non-orthogonal PEEC to avoid staircase problem; modelling of anisotropic composites; modelling of non-radiating networks; effective skin-effect modelling; Model Order Reduction, MOR). Acceleration methods like MLFMA (Multi-Level Fast Multipole Algorithm) and parallel coding were applied in order to allow effective analysis of large structures in a limited amount of time, with currently available HW resources (i.e. no expensive HPC resources required). The computational module was integrated, together with pre-processing and post-processing modules, into a SW CAE tool (“ALEEN Modelling Tool”) also providing user-friendly working procedures, projects management, data storing and data navigation. A general “client-server” HW configuration was allowed (without any limitations about the number of clients and servers) with automatic dispatching procedures for optimal exploitation of the HW resources. The procedure was validated against experimental data measured on a mock-up.