Simulated Metallic Structures for Use in Radar Measurements

The Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Division Newport has been active in quantifying radar signatures of periscopes, communication masts, and sensors, as well as different materials. Development of computational prediction codes, along with radar measurements of various targets, have provided the primary analysis tools in signature management. Because of the nature of these radar measurements, techniques were developed to simulate metallic structures. With these techniques, manufacturing time and cost were greatly reduced along with large reductions in structure weight. These techniques primarily used electrically conducting tape and paint as coatings to simulate a metallic, electrically conducting surface. Simulation validation, with computational code, was achieved with the production and measurement of several simulated metallic structures. By achieving this validation, reasonable geometrical design changes could be developed and studied with computational predictions. The most recent experiment involved using a simulated metallic surface to provide an entire environment for the targets under test. Again by using these metallic coated structures to create a multipath environment, expense and manufacturing time were reduced. This simulated environment will, it is hoped, provide a very controllable and repeatable measurement tool for incoherent scattering and fully polarimetric studies of a multipath environment.