Professor Dragan Poljak from the Department of Electronics, University of Split, Croatia, gave a special seminar at Ashurst Lodge on “Human Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields” in which he referred to the potential biological effects of electromagnetic pulses to human health.
Dragan presented a direct time domain calculation of transient currents and fields induced within the human being. His mathematical model is based on the cylindrical representation of the human body and on the Hallen integral equation approach. The space-time domain integral equations arising from the antenna theory have been numerically solved via the efficient Galerkin-Bubnov variant of the boundary element method (GB-BEM).
He also referred to some measures of the transient response of the human body, such as average value of transient current, root-mean square value of the transient current, instantaneous and average power. The computation of these parameters is also performed via an efficient BEM scheme.
The most important application of this analysis is the investigation of the transient radiation generated by an indirect lightning strike to a nearby human being.
The lecture finished with a lively discussion related to the possible ongoing research on the subject regarding a more accurate representation of the human body and the inclusion of thermal effects of transient radiation.
Dragan holds an Adjunct Associate Professorship at the Wessex Institute and is in charge of the International Master on Electromagnetic Compatibility organised by the two Institutions, ie WIT and the University of Split.
Wessex Institute