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Electro-magnetic hardening?

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DigiTan

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I was reading through Tom Clancy's "Fighter Wing" yesterday and into the B-1B Lancer section, he mentions that avionics in these Cold War planes were made resistant EM damage associated with Nukes. I was hoping one of you semiconductor engineer types might explain what this means exactly and how it's done. Is there a commercial application?
 
An electromagnetic pulse that jams all radio cominication for a short time.

Wen thay droped the first nuclear bomb they jamed radio all over the world.

There are also E-bombs that dont aculy explode they make an electromagnetic pulse that frys electronics stuff.The weak ones curupt data on hard drives a litle stronger ones fry digital electronics and the strongest fry analog electronics.
 
Normally they increase the band-gap in RAD-hard components, it make the IC's slower BUT it means theat IF it get's hit with a high-energy wave it reduces the number of electrons being given enough energy to then cause an avalache in the silicon (akin to zener effect)


I personally like what the russians did with their Big Bear bomber.
back at the hight of the cold war there was no protection for EMP, the US tried and tried making RAD-hard stuff (still doesn't fully exist) and making their aircaft faster then sound to outrun the bomb blast.

The russians knew it would be hard so they just stuck to using valves in their long-range bombers
 
In that film that we are talking about in the **** chat (War of the worlds.) lightning was so strong that it created an EMP blast wave that fryed the mobile phones,watches,car electronics...
 
That's pretty cool. (The movie and the bandgap thing I mean). So this is mostly a property of the substrate? I heard that the few avionics the B-52s carried favored germanium.

Anyway, short of a nuke blast :lol: , are there any places were my electronics would be suseptable to the EM-produced avalanching? Lightning maybe?
 
I never sean lighting make an big enugh EMP blast to destroy anything unles it hits directly in to it.Only once watching TV an lightning struck realy close and LOUD and the TVs picture went white for about 0.1 s and then worked normaly.That was some EMP but realy weak.

Lightning make most radio waves in the SW band.You may have sean a lightning detector circuit that recives radio waves in the SW band and if it detects a pulse it lights an light bulb and sounds a buzzer.

This was just a movie.
 
Oh an the only way lightning is going to fry your eqipment is if it hits the house (a REALY low chance of that hapening) or if it hits the electrical wireing.This hapend here about 5 years ago.The lighting hit the mains and fryed a lot of TVs,VCRs,PCs... but luckuly the only thing that has blown here is an fuse.We heard an suden realy LOUD bang and the lights went out.Then i went in the dark (it was evning) to check the circuit breaker and it was triped.So i switched it back on and wvryting workd.

And about 2 weaks ago there was a huge lightning storm (the one that inteferd whith the TV) I was on my PC and dads PC was off.my PC worked fine but wen dad tryed to boot it up it codnt find anything conected to the IDE.So dad tock it to the computer shop (still had warenty) and they figured out that it fryed the motherbord (pobobly the IDE controler)
 
So I guess the threat from lightning is just broadband RF noise and not necessarily magnetic?
 
I litle explenation how this works:
Take an mobile phone for exsample.It can jam stuff like TVs,stereos,PC,monitors... This is becose the radio waves from the phone are being thurnd back in to electic curent in wires as tacks in PCBs.An E-bomb make a LOT of this waves so it inuces amps of curent at high voltage in wires and components and so frying them.


EDIT:
Its like puting somting in a micorwave.Micorwaves are radio at an high freq. so it makes the same thing.
 
Someone Electro said:
Radio IS electronagnetic waves.
I'm aware of this, but is it appropriate to treat an EMP as eletromagnetic (RFI) or is it purely magnetic in nature? Like a can-crusher?
 
Styx said:
I personally like what the russians did with their Big Bear bomber. back at the hight of the cold war there was no protection for EMP, the US tried and tried making RAD-hard stuff (still doesn't fully exist) and making their aircaft faster then sound to outrun the bomb blast.

The russians knew it would be hard so they just stuck to using valves in their long-range bombers

A similar thing happened with pens. The US spent millions developing the pen that could write in zero gravity - the Russians used a pencil.

Mike.
 
Someone Electro said:
yea dumb US

Not so dumb! - as a contractor for NASA which would you rather do?, develop a zero gravity ballpoint pen (and charge them millions), or give them a pencil and charge them 10 cents?.

So it's a wise move on the contractors part, but pretty stupid on NASA's part :lol:
 
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