Efficient modeling method for Quasi-Conical frequency selective surface radomes of aircraft

Abstract

Frequency selective surfaces (FSS) can effectively reduce the radar cross section (RCS) of cavities, which makes them ideally suited for arrangement on quasi-conical radomes positioned at the forward section of fighter aircraft. Radomes of this type are typically non-developable surfaces, while current academic research lacks dedicated modeling methodologies specifically for aircraft nose-conFigured quasi-conical FSS radomes. This paper focuses on addressing this challenge by proposing an efficient modeling method for constructing complex FSS arrays on new-generation fighter aircraft nose-conFigured quasi-conical radomes. The method employs a virtual developable conical mold to achieve minimal-distortion flattening of quasi-conical non-developable surfaces, establishing a complete mapping relationship between the minimally distorted flat-unfold plane and the original non-developable radome surface. This mapping enables linear transfer of pre-designed FSS arrays from the minimal-distortion flat-unfold plane to the non-developable radome surface, thereby generating a 3D digital model of the nose-conFigured quasi-conical FSS radome. Compared to traditional methods, this approach establishes a minimum-distortion complete mapping without compromising modeling accuracy while requiring only approximately 30% of the computational time of conventional techniques. This significantly enhances computational efficiency for modeling complex FSS arrays on quasi-conical undevelopable radome surfaces. The process of the modeling is presented in this paper in detail, and the effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by constructing FSS arrays on radomes of two typical types of fighter aircraft.