Design of Airborne SATCOM Radome

Abstract Airborne Radome is a structure used as a protective enclosure of an antenna, usually placed externally on an aircraft. The primary purpose of this Radome is to protect the antenna from external factors such as aerodynamic loads, harsh environmental conditions, etc., while allowing the transmission of electromagnetic radiation from the antenna. These structures are generally manufactured using composite materials such as quartz fibre-based composites, glass fibre-based composites and aramid fibre-based composites, etc., due to the requirements of electromagnetic transmissibility. The current work aims to develop a Radome using available materials with improved performance. List of available materials from various Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) has been prepared in this study. Material Indices have been developed based on the requirements, and the materials are ranked based on these indices. To improve the performance of the existing radome, multiple composite Radome designs based on different material combinations and lay-up sequences were explored. These designs were modelled using Ansys Composite PrePost (ACP) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was performed for each composite design in Ansys Workbench to examine the structural performance under the given loading conditions. Electromagnetic properties of each composite design have been estimated using various theories of Rule of Mixtures. Comparative study has been conducted using the structural and electromagnetic performance of each design, and the optimum design has been chosen based on the comparison.