60 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 54, NO.

1, FEBRUARY 2012
Optimization of Multilayer Shields Made
of Composite Nanostructured Materials
Davide Micheli, Carmelo Apollo, Roberto Pastore, Daniele Barbera, Ram on Bueno Morles, Mario Marchetti,
Gabriele Gradoni, Member, IEEE, Valter Mariani Primiani, Member, IEEE, and Franco Moglie, Member, IEEE
AbstractIn this paper, we propose a multilayer nanostructured
composite for broadband shielding applications. Layers disposal,
electrical parameters, and thicknesses are optimized through a
winning particle optimization algorithm to achieve the minimiza-
tion of the transmitted waves. The structures are simulated by
including the forward/backward scattering matrix formalism in
the optimization code. The adopted algorithm is the recently intro-
duced winning particle optimization. Manufacturing of the com-
posites is grounded on the optimization procedure. Thanks to the
macroscopic absorption features of such nanostructured layers,
very thin and lightweight composites can be produced. Several
weight percentages of multiwall carbon nanotubes are considered
in composite base material manufacturing, also including 6wt%
and 15wt% in order to enhance the electromagnetic shielding per-
formance. Prototypes are tested in the microwave region, showing
the reliability of the optimization procedure.
Index TermsCarbon nanotubes, carboncarbon, modeling,
radar absorbing materials, shielding effectiveness (SE), winning
particle optimization (WPO).
I. INTRODUCTION
A
BRANCH of scientic research about composite mate-
rials is focused on electromagnetic characterization and
subsequent application of electric conductive polymers. The
use of such structures is relevant in aerospace/aeronautics [1],
for electromagnetic protection from natural phenomena (light-
ning) [2], and intentional interference with radar absorbing
material [3], in electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) [4], for
equipment-level shielding, high-intensity radiated elds protec-
tion, anechoic chambers (for the realizations of wedges and
pyramidal arrays), and human exposure mitigation.
Recent study of nanotechnology applications in EMC are
widely addressed to interconnects [5][8] and to the shielding
Manuscript received April 29, 2011; revised July 30, 2011 and September 1,
2011; accepted October 4, 2011. Date of publication November 8, 2011; date
of current version February 17, 2012.
D. Micheli, C. Apollo, R. Pastore, D. Barbera, R. B. Morles, and
M. Marchetti are with the Department of Astronautic, Electrical and
Energetic Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00138, Rome,
Italy (e-mail: davide.micheli@uniroma1.it; carmelo.apollo@uniroma1.it;
robertopast@gmail.com; daniele.barbera@uniroma1.it; Ramon.Bueno.Morles
@uniroma1.it; mario.marchetti@uniroma1.it).
G. Gradoni is with the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied
Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 USA (e-mail:
ggradoni@umd.edu).
V. Mariani Primiani and F. Moglie are with Dipartimento di Ingegneria
dellInformazione, Universit` a Politecnica delle Marche, 60131 Ancona, Italy
(e-mail: v.mariani@univpm.it; f.moglie@univpm.it).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TEMC.2011.2171688
effectiveness (SE). In particular, SE covers nanotubes [9], meta-
surfaces [10], multilayer materials [11], periodic screens [12],
and metallic foams [13].
In this paper, composite reinforced by carbon nanostruc-
tured materials are considered, mainly because of their inter-
esting electromagnetic characteristics, such as high electrical
conductivity and excellent microwave absorption and shield-
ing behavior [14][16]. Numerical design of wide frequency
band radar absorbing structures is presented and discussed in
detail. It is crucial to highlight the need of interdisciplinary
research elds to go through nanomaterials besides nanotech-
nology, electromagnetic wave propagation theory, evolution-
ary computation algorithms, composite materials manufacturing
techniques, non destructive electromagnetic measurement tech-
niques and use those to obtain the electromagnetic absorber
is strongly required. Composite materials considered in this pa-
per for shielding structure are based on epoxy matrix reinforced
with several species of carbon nanomaterials. These latter have
been chosen taking into account the lowest market prices: the
economic aspects, normally neglected in small laboratory ap-
plications, are on the contrary important in real applications
where the amount of carbon nanopowders llers could be rel-
atively high. In such a scenario, a good compromise in terms
of cost/performances has been obtained using industrial grade
multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). Materials used are
MWCNTs (type NANOCYLTM NC7000), bought at
NANOCYL (diameter around 9.5 nm, length 1.5 m, purity
90%); epoxy-resin is PrimeLM 20LV (density 1.123 g/cm
3
),
Hardner (density 0.936 g/cm
3
). Carbon nanobers (CNFs)
bought at SigmaAldrich (diameter around 75 nm and length
50100 m).
As far as optimization algorithms, winning particle opti-
mization (WPO) recently introduced has been adopted [17],
[18]. WPO has been applied in order to design and optimize
multilayer materials able to effective absorbing/shielding mi-
crowaves. Microwave absorption concepts are quite often ex-
ploited in radar absorbing materials [19][21], while microwave
shielding concepts are more often adopted in electromagnetic
interference (EMI) applications [22], [23].
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the physi-
cal and electromagnetic properties of the material used are de-
scribed. In Section III, the electromagnetic models of absorbing
and shielding structures are described. In Section IV, the adopted
experimental setup is accurately described also showing the test
xture. In Section V, results are presented showing compar-
isons of absorption and shielding properties between simulated
and manufactured composite materials. The shielding capabil-
ity of high concentration MWCNTs (up to 15wt%) composite
0018-9375/$26.00 2011 IEEE
MICHELI et al.: OPTIMIZATION OF MULTILAYER SHIELDS MADE OF COMPOSITE NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS 61
TABLE I
CODING OF MATERIALS IN THE DATA BASE
TABLE II
RELATIVE DIELECTRIC CONSTANT OF MATERIALS (REAL
AND IMAGINARY PART)
materials are also analyzed and compared to that of carbon
carbon (CC). In Appendix, the WPO algorithm is described
together with its objective functions.
II. MATERIAL CODING AND PROPERTIES
The considered composite materials consist in epoxy-
resin loaded with carbon nanopowders. Conductive llers
(MWCNTs and CNFs) have been uniformly dispersed in epoxy-
resin at different weight percentages (0.5%wt, 1%wt, 2%wt,
2.5%wt, and 3 %wt) (see Table I), and the resulting composites
have been characterized using waveguide measurements apply-
ing canonical algorithm to retrieve electric permittivity [18],
[19]. In [18], the electrical permittivity of composite materials
is reported as function of the frequency. Table II reports those
values for some frequencies. Each composite material has been
used to build a single layer of the multilayer structure. Mor-
phology and scanning electron microscope (SEM) pictures of
materials in Table I are reported in [18]. A critical point is to
obtain the nanoparticles dispersion in epoxy-resin with a homo-
geneous and isotropic distribution. This is also due to the Van
der Walls [24] forces that tend to aggregate the nanoparticles to
each other. In materials preparation, the dispersion of the carbon
nanomaterials within the polymer matrix has been achieved by
sonication at roomtemperature. The sonication has been carried
out at 20 kHz for about 15 min by means of Sonics Ultranson-
icator (VCX750 model), setting 20% amplitude with respect to
the full-scale oscillation magnitude of ultrasonic processor.
Fig. 1. SEM image of carbon nanotube 15wt% composite material sample
fracture. Large scale view. It is easily visible nanoparticles presence, due
the huge quantity of agglomeration zones. Those can be spotted on all the
15 wt% specimens cross section, thanks to a good dispersion although the high
MWCNTs percentage.
Fig. 2. SEM image of carbon nanotube 15wt% composite material sample
fracture. Detailed view. This SEM image focus on an agglomeration zone,
already from this magnication is well visible a brous structure, mainly on the
brighter zones where the contrast is better. Also here it is clear that we obtained
a good and homogeneous dispersion.
62 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 54, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 3. SEM image of carbon nanotube 15wt% composite material sample
fracture. More detailed view. This is an high magnication of the Fig. 2, al-
ways on the fracture line. Here is well visible the MWCNTs high presence
into the composite, and mainly its brous structure. This type of structure
presents MWCNTs beams, due the high MWCNTs percentage dispersed in the
epoxy-resin.
In order to enhance the electromagnetic shielding perfor-
mance also 6wt% and 15wt% MWCNTs composite base mate-
rials have been manufactured and tested. These two last com-
posite materials have not been coded in Table I in fact, due to
the high percentage weight content has not been possible to
compute the corresponding electric permittivity using standard
waveguide method. By the literature is known that strength of
composite materials decreases with the increase of the weight
percentage of MWCNTs in the resin. In particular, the strength
decreases to 50% at 1wt% of MWCNTs [25]. In our scenario,
the composite materials we prepared have not been conceived
as structural mechanical materials but simply as shielding ma-
terials. In Figs. 13, large scale and detailed SEM images of
carbon nanotube 15wt% composite material sample fracture are
shown, and homogeneous dispersion of nanomaterials can be
observed.
III. MODELING AND OPTIMIZATION
We assume an oblique plane wave impinging onto the multi-
layer composite. Both the reection and the propagation through
the layers stack can be traced by the forward/backward scatter-
ing matrix theory. We have previously shown how such formal-
ism can be integrated with a genetic algorithm to obtain fast
and reliable design tools for absorbing structures [26]. Here,
we focus on the computer-aided design of microwave shielding
structure (MSS), involving the same electromagnetic simulation
Fig. 4. General multilayer scheme of MSS.
strategy. The WPO algorithm is applied to cope with the com-
plex problem of multilayer shield design with several degrees
of freedom, namely the number, the material type, the ordering,
and the thickness of layers.
Proposed structures are made of carbon nanostructured com-
posite materials. Such degree of freedom makes it hard to nd
the optimal MSS without the adoption of the evolutionary com-
putation and/or iterative search process. Here, the MSS design
and optimization is based on objective function minimization
procedure which seeks the best tradeoff between structure thick-
ness (to be minimized) and absorbed electromagnetic power
(to be maximized). The maximum shielding goal is basically
achieved minimizing the transmission between interfaces: this
turns into maximizing both the reection at each interface and
the absorption inside each layer [26]. In particular, absorption
mechanisms in nanotubes are related to the fraction of the trans-
mitted power being localized inside each nanostructured layer.
Fig. 4 shows a general situation where a multilayer structure is
excited by a oblique plane wave: each layer is labeled by the
index x. SE is dened as
SE = 20 log
|E
x+1
|
|E
0
|
. (1)
The computation of the transmitted eld E
0
is a canonical elec-
tromagnetic problem. Its solution is well known for both trans-
verse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) modes [27],
[28], in terms of transmission (TC) and reection (RC) coef-
cients through the wave impedance of each layer. Each layer
is made of one composite material, and TE/TM characteristic
wave impedances are computed knowing dielectric properties
of composite materials and incidence angles of electromagnetic
waves acting on each single layer

TM
x
=
_

0
_

r
x

r
x
cos(
x
) (2)

TE
x
=
_

0
_

r
x

r
x
1
cos(
x
)
(3)
where for the Snells law

x
= arcsin
__

r
x + 1

r
x
sin(
x+1
)
_
. (4)
As far as geometric properties of multilayer structures are
concerned, the thickness of each layer can be dened by WPO
MICHELI et al.: OPTIMIZATION OF MULTILAYER SHIELDS MADE OF COMPOSITE NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS 63
Fig. 5. Directional SE measurement scheme. (a) Front view. (b) Top view
where absorbent pyramidal wall is shown.
in the range 010 mm, while the number of layers is upper-
bounded to maximum ten layers. The effective number of layers
is established by the WPO optimization procedure which is
able to remove one or more useless layers from the multilayer
structure. The order of layer materials is not a priori xed;
the WPOalgorithmaccesses the materials, coded in Table I, and
decides the most appropriate material for each layer. A detailed
description of the WPO algorithm is reported in the Appendix.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP DESCRIPTION
Fig. 5 schematizes the adopted setup. The use of horn an-
tennas for SE measurements is not totally new. An example of
near-eld test setup can be found in [29]. The setup we propose
operates in far-eld conditions, and it works for arbitrary an-
gles of incidence. Its principle is to measure the attenuation of
a microwave reference signal when it passes through a certain
material, in free-space propagation conditions and with a pre-
cise incidence angle. The measured attenuation represents the
shielding capability of material under test. In Fig. 6, a detailed
schema of our in-house ad-hoc designed test xture is shown.
The sample holder is an aluminum mold where the sample is
cast. When the holder is closed by its lid, the liquid composite
material is injected to make shielding material and multilayer
structure. After the curing phase, the lid is removed and the
holder is connected to the horn antenna to perform SE mea-
surements. The sample is never removed from the holder; a
new holder is used for a new sample to be tested. This sample
Fig. 6. Sample holder system used in manufacturing shielding materials and
to host horn antenna during shielding measurement.
manufacturing procedure and the use of metallic holder avoid
leakages around the edges of the sample. The blocking antenna
systemallows a good electrical contact between the antenna and
the sample holder. More precisely, the sample holder aperture
dimensions are equal to the internal dimensions of the antenna
mouth. The small thickness of the antenna wall (about 1.5 mm)
allows a good antenna xing. Thanks to this small indentation in
the holder, the antenna can be easily mounted without covering
its mouth. We veried that the antenna reection coefcient was
not appreciably inuenced by the sample holder presence.
The measurement of shielding capability of a certain structure
or material is computed by means of scattering parameter S
ij
,
available on the vector network analyzer (VNA) connected to the
transmitting and receiving antennas. In particular, the receiving
horn antenna is equipped with a sample holder able to host
the structure/material to be tested. The measurement of SE
M
is evaluated as the difference in decibels, or the ratio in linear,
between the received signal when the sample holder is empty and
the received signal when it is lled with materials. Sensitivity
of measurement system is computed closing the sample holder
aperture with the metallic lid and performing the same ratio of
scattering parameters. This last SE test represents an index of
the maximum SE
R
measurable by our system.
SE
M
(dB) = 10 log
_

S
O
21

S
M
21

2
_
(5)
SE
R
(dB) = 10 log
_

S
O
21

S
S
21

2
_
(6)
where S
21
is the scattering parameter measured by VNA, the su-
perscripts M means Material, Rmeans Reference, S means
Short, and O means Open. Measurements involve mainly
the absolute amplitude of scattering parameter:
64 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 54, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 7. Sample holder system for SE measurements. The two pictures show
the Q-par Angus LTDantenna (type QSH16S10), mounted on the manufactured
sample holder support. Horn antenna frequency range is 8.212.4 GHz, the gain
is 10 dBi.
1) S
M
21
is measured when shielding materials are located
within sample holder;
2) S
O
21
is measured when no shielding materials are located
within sample holder;
3) S
S
21
is measured when metallic enclosure is located within
sample holder.
In order to avoid as much as possible that spurious re-
ected signal could affect the SE measurement, the receiving
antenna and sample holder have been inserted in a wall made of
ECCOSORB microwave absorbing materials effective in the
frequency band above 5 GHz. In such a manner, all the po-
tentially unwanted reected signals around the aperture of re-
ceiving antenna should be lowered down. To grant good S/N
conditions, the output power of VNA has been set to +3 dBm.
The antennas are Q-par Angus horn antennas in the 8.212.4
GHz frequency range. In shielding measurements, it is required
that all microwave measured signals are the only ones passing
through materials to be tested; this condition is needed to per-
form accurate measurements of shielding properties of a certain
material/structure. The sample holder we built is able to ac-
complish this requirement. In Fig. 7, a practical realization of
antenna supports for shielding measurement is shown.
V. RESULTS
Scheme of tested materials and structures is shown in Fig. 8.
Measurements of materials and multilayer structures are further
discussed. Materials considered are the following:
1) single layer: 6.5 mm of CNFs 3wt%;
2) single layer: 6.5 mm of MWCNTs 6 wt%;
3) single layer: 6.5 mm of MWCNTs 15 wt%;
4) two layers: 5 mm composed by 4 mm epoxy-resin and
1 mm MWCNTs 3wt%;
5) four layers: 10 mm composed by 3 mm epoxy-resin, 1
mm MWCNTs 1wt%, 1 mm MWCNTs 2wt%, 5 mm
MWCNTs 3wt%.
Fig. 9 reports SE results for the worst case situation of nor-
mal incidence and for the situation of an incidence angle of
45

. Comparison between simulated and measured SE of man-

ufactured materials shows good agreement, conrming the re-
liability of the SE simulation code. It can be noted how the
non-normal incidence slightly increases the SE. Fig. 10 re-
ports other SE for other cases together with a comparison
with shielding capability of CC [30], [31]. In such materi-
als, it is possible to observe a high SE which becomes com-
Fig. 8. Analyzed MSS.
parable to that of CC, reaching sensitivity limits of the mea-
surement system. In these cases, only measurements are re-
ported because the high material conductivity make impossible
to recover correct permittivity values from the adopted wave-
guide method. It is worth noticing that the SE performance
of CC is mainly based on a high reection coefcient, while
in the case of the optimized multilayer, the loss mechanism
also contributes to the shielding action allowing a reection
reduction. As an example, Fig. 11 shows the reection coef-
cient corresponding to the case (f) of Fig. 8. Reection is low
and remains below 20 dB beyond 9 GHz. On the other hand,
we can note that the CC practically behaves as a short circuit.
MICHELI et al.: OPTIMIZATION OF MULTILAYER SHIELDS MADE OF COMPOSITE NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS 65
Fig. 9. SE for MSS: (g) epoxy-resin and MWCNT 1,2,3%, the wave inci-
dence is 45

; (f) epoxy-resin and MWCNT 1,2,3%, the wave incidence is 0

;
(e) epoxy-resin and MWCNT 3%, the wave incidence is 0

; (a) CNF 3%,

the wave incidence is 0

. A comparison between simulated (dashed line) and

measured (continuous line) curves is reported.
Fig. 10. SE for MSS and CC materials: (s) the sensitivity of measurement
system is measured by closing the horn antenna aperture with the metallic
enclosure; (d) carboncarbon, wave incidence 0

; (c) MWCNT 15%, wave

incidence 0

; (b) MWCNT 6%, wave incidence 0

.
Fig. 11. Reection and transmission coefcients for the following cases:
(d) RC, reection coefcient of carbon-carbon, wave incidence 0

; (f) RC, reec-

tion coefcient of epoxy-resin and MWCNT 1,2,3%, the wave incidence is 0

;
(f) TC, transmission coefcient of epoxy-resin and MWCNT 1,2,3%, the wave
incidence is 0

.
This behavior can be appealing in those applications where high
shielding and low reections are needed.
VI. CONCLUSION
With the aid of optimization, we demonstrated the possibility
of achieving very interesting microwave absorbing and shielding
structures through the usage of carbon nanomaterials as ller in
epoxy-resin. The comparison between measured and simulated
parameters conrms the validity of developed theoretical elec-
tromagnetic model. It is shown that composite materials built
with MWCNTs 15wt% exhibit shielding properties comparable
to that of CC materials. Such high shielding properties put
CC and MWCNTs 15wt% composite materials as interesting
candidates in most EMI shielding applications.
APPENDIX
WPO DESCRIPTION
WPO is a simple algorithm where at each time epoch of
evolution, the particle, which best t the objective function, is
deputed to pilot the trajectory of the remaining particles within
the multidimensional space of solutions, i.e., variables to be
optimized.
In Fig. 12, WPO ow chart is shown. At the beginning of
the iterations, particles are randomly distributed within the n-
dimensional search space. At each iteration time, the objective
function of each particle is computed. Then, particles are com-
pared to each other using value of their objective function and
the best tting particle is marked with its proper index. Each
particle position is completely dened by its coordinates and
their number represents the dimension of the space where all
particles jump searching for the optimal solution. Trajectory of
each particle, except that of the best tting particle, is dened in
the following way: if mth-coordinate of a certain particle P
k
is
lesser then the corresponding mth-coordinate of the current best
particle

P
q
, then the new mth-coordinate will result from the
sum of current particle and best particle mth-coordinates; while
if mth-coordinate of a certain particle P
k
is greater than the
corresponding mth-coordinate of the current best particle

P
q
,
then the new mth-coordinate will result from the difference be-
tween the current particle mth-coordinates and the best particle
mth-coordinates. Here, q is the index of the best particle found
in each iteration and the condition which needs to be grant is
q = k, i.e., all kth particles can be displaced except the best qth
particle. Equation (7) describes the mentioned approach. Parti-
cle position at the (i + 1)th iteration as a function of particle
position in the previous ith iteration is
P
k
m
(i + 1) = R
m
P
k
m
(i) +g

P
q
m
(i) (7)
where g = +1 if P
k
m
(i) <

P
q
m
(i); g = 1 if P
k
m
(i) >

P
q
m
(i); k
is the particle index; q is the best tting particle index (q = k);
n is the space dimension; the index m ranges in [1, n]; R
m
is a
random number in [0, 1]; is a convergence parameter; and i is
the current iteration. R
m
is used to randomly dene the amount
of displacement of each single coordinate. Such randomization
develops the searching phase by conferring some causality to
the amplitude of jumps. Convergence parameter helps the nal
convergence of the WPOalgorithmas follows. At the beginning
of the iterations, the WPOmust be capable to explore the largest
space of solutions as possible. On the other hand, close to the
66 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY, VOL. 54, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2012
Fig. 12. WPO ow chart.
end of the iterations, high amplitude of jumps could represent
a drawback since a position representing the optimal solution
could forbidden. In order to improve the WPO convergence,
a mechanism providing a progressive reduction of maximum
jumps amplitude has been introduced and it is identied by
the parameter. Calling N the total number of iterations and
supposing ith the current iteration, then the value of is given
by
=
_
1
i
N + 1
_
P
(8)
where = J(R
m
0.5) with J the jump amplitude. In (8),
the meaning of and P parameters is in fast or slowconvergence
of the WPOalgorithm. In particular, the higher the , the greater
the initial jumps amplitude and the greater the distances where
particles will start to explore the search space. As far as P is
concerned the higher its value, the faster the convergence to
a suboptimal solution. The parameter is made using J and
R
m
. This last is a random number between [1/2, +1/2]. The
randompart of develops the search capability of the algorithm.
At the end of each WPOiteration, check of boundary conditions
for the new set of particles coordinates is made in order to avoid
to overcome the constraints.
The multilayer absorbing structures considered in the de-
sign procedure can have up to ten layers so dimension of
layer space is 10 i.e., m = 10, 9, . . . , 1. Since the optimiza-
tion are for both layer thickness and layer material type,
WPO algorithms need to be structured in order to take into
account for both quantities. In the WPO algorithm, we have
T
k
(i) =
_
T
k
10
(i), T
k
9
(i), . . . , T
k
1
(i)

as array of thicknesses,
where T
k
m
(i) is the thickness of the mth layer and P
k
(i) =
[P
k
10
(i), P
k
9
(i), . . . , P
k
1
(i)] as array of material type, where
P
k
m
(i) is the type of material associated to the mth layer.
The equations related to layer thicknesses and layer material for
each single particle are simply updated according to
T
k
m
(i + 1) = R
m
1
T
k
m
(i) +g
T

T
q
m
(i) (9)
P
k
m
(i + 1) = round
_
R
m
2
P
k
m
(i) +g
M

P
q
m
(i)

(10)
where R
m
1
and R
m
2
are random number in the closed range
[0 1], T
k
m
(i) is the current kth particle, mth layer thickness
at the ith iteration, while P
k
m
(i) is the current kth particle, mth
layer material at the ith iteration. Rounded values in material
equation are required since the index of material of each layer
must be an integer number ranging from 1 to materials number
available in the data base of materials, here set to 9. Other WPO
parameters and variables are
g
T
=
_
1 if T
k
m
(i) <

T
q
m
(i)
1 if T
k
m
(i) >

T
q
m
(i)
(11)
g
M
=
_
1 if P
k
m
(i) <

P
q
m
(i)
1 if P
k
m
(i) >

P
q
m
(i)
(12)
where q is the index of best particles (

T ) and (

P); k is the index
of particles with k = q; n is the dimension number; m is the
current dimension ranging between [1, n]. In the presented im-
plementation, the values of P and of convergence parameters
have been set to 1, the number of WPO particles has been xed
to 200, and number of iterations to N = 800.
WPO tries to minimize a global objective function (GOF)
which, in turn, are built using elementary objective functions
(EOFs). The EOF for TM and TE modes are named as
TM
,

TE
for reection coefcient,

TM
,

TE
for the transmission
coefcient, and

T for thickness. The formal denition of the
EOF for TM and TE modes are shown in (13)(15). We can
observe that for each particle (k) of WPO, the corresponding
EOF is evaluated over the entire frequency band and over the
entire incidence angle range

TM/TE
(P) =
f
u

f =f
l

=
l

TM/TE
(P, f, ) (13)
where P is the current particle of WPO particles family, f is the
frequency step, f
l
and f
u
are the start and stop frequency band,
is the current step angle, and
l
and
u
represent the angular
MICHELI et al.: OPTIMIZATION OF MULTILAYER SHIELDS MADE OF COMPOSITE NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS 67
range bounds.

TM/TE
(P) =
f
u

f =f
l

=
l

TM/TE
(P, f, ) . (14)
The denition of the EOF for thickness is

T =
10

i=1
T
i
(P) (15)
where T
i
is the thickness of the ith layer. Two different weighting
factors are introduced: one is called , (0 1), weighting

T w.r.t. and

, and the other one is called , (0 1),
weighting w.r.t.

. Such weighting factors are chosen by the
user and their meaning have to be intended as the capability
of the tool to design the multilayer structure making privilege
to the electromagnetic performances w.r.t. the thickness when
tends to 1, or making privilege in lowering the transmission
coefcient (MSS, mainly in shielding applications) rather than
lowering the reection coefcient (radar absorbing materials
mainly in absorbing applications) when tends to 0. Final GOF
is a linear combination of the described EOFs
GOF(P) = [O
1
(P) + (1 )O
2
(P) + (1 )O
3
(P)]
(16)
where
O
1
(P) =

TM
(P)
A
+

TE
(P)
A
(17)
O
2
(P) =

TM
(P)
A
+

TE
(P)
A
(18)
O
3
(P) =

T(P)
C
(19)
A and C are normalization factors: A is the product between
the frequency step number and the angle step number, whereas
C is the product between the maximum layer number and the
maximum layer thickness.
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Davide Micheli was born in Ancona, Italy, in 1967.
He received the University degree in electronics engi-
neering from the University of Ancona (now Univer-
sit` a Politecnica delle Marche), Ancona, Italy, in 2001,
and the University degree in astronautic engineering
and Ph.D. degree in aerospace engineering from the
Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, in 2007
and 2011, respectively.
He is currently with the Telecom Italia Labo-
ratory, as a Researcher with Mobile Telecommuni-
cations and Neural Networks and collaborates with
Sapienza University of Rome, where his research activities are related to
electromagnetic elds and composite materials interaction. His current research
interests include electric conductive polymers and radar-absorbing structures
modeling.
Carmelo Apollo was born in Catanzaro, Italy, on
April 20, 1974. He received the Dottore Ingegnere
degree in electronics engineering from the Univer-
sity of lAquila, lAquila, Italy, in 2007, and the
M.Sc. degree in composites and nanotechnology for
aerospace from the School of Aerospace Engineer-
ing, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy, in
2008.
He has been a Researcher Assistant with the
Sapienza University of Rome since 2009. His re-
search interests include electromagnetic elds and
composite and nanomaterial interaction.
Roberto Pastore was born in Napoli, Italy, on May
25, 1977. He received the University degree in
physics from Napoli Federico II University, Napoli,
Italy, in 2004. He is currently working toward the
Ph.D. degree at the School of Aerospace Engineer-
ing, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
His experience concerns material science and
nanotechnology and production of carbon nanotubes
(CNTs). His current research interests include CNTs,
nanostructured physical modeling, and coil guns.
Daniele Barbera was born in Rome, Italy, in 1986.
He received the B.S. degree in science of material
from the University Tor Vergata Rome, Rome, in
2010.
He is currently with the Sapienza University of
Rome, Rome, where he is involved in low- and high-
percentage carbon nanotubes inclusion in epoxy resin
matrix for space application, studying electrical be-
havior. He also works on space structures and material
design; actually, he is developing a space sails con-
cept. His research interests include material science,
nanotechnology, CVD process, and space structures.
Ram on Bueno Morles was born in Maracaibo,
Venezuela, on November, 30, 1979. He received the
University degree in physics from Universidad del
Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela, in 2007. He is cur-
rently working toward the Ph.D. degree at the School
of Aerospace Engineering, Sapienza University of
Rome, Rome, Italy.
His experience concerns material science and nan-
otechnology and production of carbon nanotubes. His
current research interests include carbon nanostruc-
tures production and morphological characterization.
Mario Marchetti was born in San Marcello, Italy,
on May 30, 1943. He received the University degree
in aeronautical engineering from Milan Polytechnic,
Milan, Italy, in 1972.
He then joined the School of Aerospace Engineer-
ing, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy,
where he is currently a Full Professor of the Engi-
neering Faculty, in charge of the Space Structures
course, the Director of the Department of Astronautic,
Electric and Energetic Engineering, and is responsi-
ble for the SASLab laboratories.
Gabriele Gradoni (M11) was born in Ancona,
Italy, in 1982. He received the M.S. degree in com-
munication engineering in 2006, and the Ph.D. de-
gree in electromagnetics and bioengineering in 2009,
both from the Universit` a Politecnica delle Marche,
Ancona, Italy.
From May to October 2008, he was a Visiting Re-
searcher at the Time, Quantum & Electromagnetics
Team of the National Physical Laboratory, London,
U.K., where he pursued different projects on random
eld theory and experiments. Since June 2010, he
has been an Associate Researcher at the Institute for Research in Electronics
and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park. He is involved in
the area of statistical and computational electrodynamics. His current research
interests include statistical physics, quantum and semi-classical wave chaos
of coupled cavities, scattering in large spatiotemporally electromagnetic sys-
tems, time-reversal, nonergodic stochastic processes, reverberation chambers,
electromagnetic theory of complex environments, random and stratied media,
nanomaterials, plasmonic metamaterials, and theoretical optics.
Dr. Gradoni is a recipient of the URSI Commission B Young Scientist Award
2010.
MICHELI et al.: OPTIMIZATION OF MULTILAYER SHIELDS MADE OF COMPOSITE NANOSTRUCTURED MATERIALS 69
Valter Mariani Primiani (M93) was born in Rome,
Italy, in 1961. He received the degree of Dottore
Ingegnere in electronics engineering from the Uni-
versity of Ancona (now Universit` a Politecnica delle
Marche) Ancona, Italy, in 1990.
He is currently an Associate Professor of elec-
tromagnetic compatibility (EMC) with the Univer-
sit` a Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy. He is
member of the Department of Information Engineer-
ing, Universit` a Politecnica delle Marche, where he
is responsible for the EMC Laboratory. His research
interests include the prediction of digital printed circuit board radiation, the
radiation from apertures, the electrostatic discharge coupling effects modeling,
and the analysis of emission and immunity test methods. More recently, he has
extended his research activity in the eld of the application of reverberation
chambers for compliance testing and for metrology applications.
Prof. Mariani Primiani is a member of the IEEE EMC Society, IEEE Instru-
mentation and Measurement Society, and the Italian Electromagnetics Society.
Franco Moglie (M91) was born in Ancona, Italy,
in 1961. He received the Dottore Ingegnere de-
gree in electronics engineering fromthe University of
Ancona (now Universit` a Politecnica delle Marche),
Ancona, Italy, in 1986, and the Ph.D. degree in elec-
tronics engineering and electromagnetics from the
University of Bari, Bari, Italy, in 1992.
Since 1986, he has been a Tenured Researcher with
the Dipartimento di Elettronica ed Automatica, Uni-
versit` a Politecnica delle Marche, where, since 2011,
he has been with the Department of Information Engi-
neering. His current research interests include electromagnetic (EM) numerical
techniques and power applications of EM eld. His research interests include
the eld of the application of reverberation chambers for compliance testing and
for metrology applications.
Dr. Moglie is a member of the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society
and the Italian Electromagnetics Society.