Investigation on the Electromagnetic Shielding Performance of Copper Plate and Copper Composite Fabrics: A Comparative Study

Recently, the advantages of protective textile materials such as cost-effectiveness, flexibility, lightweight, etc. over metal plates are emphasized in many studies. However, these studies did not provide a comparison of protective performances between fabrics and metal plates. In this study, electromagnetic shielding performances of copper plate and metal composite woven/knitted fabrics were compared. For this purpose, electromagnetic shielding effectiveness of single and double layer copper plate and metal composite fabrics were measured in vertical and horizontal directions. As a result, the copper plate showed better performance than composite fabric samples for both measurement directions. In general, the EMSE of the composite fabrics were lower than 10 dB for horizontal directions. Only the copper plates provided electromagnetic shielding at a significant level (up to 60 dB) against horizontally polarized waves. EMSE behavior of copper plate was similar for both directions due to the isotropic structure and this performance maintained at higher frequency level. On the other hand, gaps in the structure of composite fabrics caused a decrease in EMSE performance against increasing frequency.