Radar Cross Section and Farfield Simulation of an Aircraft
This article demonstrates the RCS and farfield simulation of an electrically large airplane. The airplane consists of PEC and is illuminated by a plane wave from the front at a frequency of 4GHz. The simulation is performed with the new Integral Equation solver (I-solver) of CST MICROWAVE STUDIO® (CST MWS). The new I-solver is based on the electric field integral equations and on the discretization by the Method of Moments (MoM). To enhance the numerical complexity the new I-solver applies the Multilevel Fast Multipole Method (MLFMM) which yields an efficient complexity for electrically large structures. As a result, the new Integral Equation solver of CST MWS is very accurate and efficient.
Figure 1: Geometry of the airplane
Figure 1 shows the geometry of the airplane. The length and width of the airplane is about 27 meters, and the total height is about 8 meters. Accordingly, the length of the airplane is about 350 wavelengths in size. Figure 2 shows the plane wave excitation from the front where the electric field vector points into the vertical direction.
Figure 2: Plane wave illumination from the front at 4GHz
We perform a monostatic RCS simulation as well as calculate the farfield and surface current distributions for the airplane. The simulation for this electrically large structure uses more than 470.000 surface mesh cells and more than 780.000 degrees of freedom for the discretization. The simulation is done with a first order discretization scheme and a solver accuracy of 1e-3 for the iterative MLFMM solver. The resulting monostatic RCS is about 37.6 dBsm and the maximal RCS is about 63.3 dBsm. Figure 3 displays the polar farfield distribution as a function of the spherical angle phi.
Figure 3: Polar plot of the farfield distribution
Figure 4 displays the absolute values of the peak surface current distribution on the airplane calculated by the I-solver at 4GHz. Figure 4 (right) shows the surface current for one of the aircraft's engines in more detail.
Figure 4: Plot of the absolute surface current of the aircraft (left), surface current for the aircraft engine (right)
Summing up the article presents the RCS and farfield calculation of an airplane at a frequency of 4GHz. It shows the ability of CST MWS to simulate electrically large structures by the new Integral Equation solver.
CST Article "Radar Cross Section and Farfield Simulation of an Aircraft"
last modified 21. Mar 2007 4:03
printed 10. Feb 2012 7:23, Article ID 286
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Article ID: 286
Last modified: 21. Mar 2007 4:03
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