Extension of the Periodic Hybrid Finite Element Method for External Stratified Dielectrics.

Abstract

The periodic hybrid finite element method was previously developed to calculate the transmission and reflection properties of general planar periodic structures, including active reflection coefficient and active element gain of phased array antennas. One of its limitations was that a unit cell of the entire material structure had to be included in the finite element region, which is inefficient when the structure includes uniform dielectric layers such as radomes and wide-angle impedance matching layers. This report presents a method for incorporating the effects of stratified exterior dielectric layers into the periodic radiation condition. The extensions to the theory include effective admittance formulas for matrix entries, incident field and reflection and transmission coefficients. The theory was verified to be correct by implementing it into a general purpose computer code and comparing its results to known solutions for waveguide phased array antennas. The new method provided a factor of five speedup in problem solution for the canonical test problems.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 01, 1998
Accession Number
ADA342241

Entities

People

  • Daniel T. Mcgrath

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Air Platforms

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Air Gaps
  • Arrays
  • Computers
  • Dielectrics
  • Electric Fields
  • Finite Element Analysis
  • Geometry
  • Integral Equations
  • Jet Propulsion
  • Magnetic Fields
  • Materials
  • Military Research
  • Phased Arrays
  • Radiation
  • Transmission Lines
  • Waveguides

Readers

  • Electromagnetic Wave Scattering and Antenna Radiation Engineering
  • Finite Element Method (FEM) for solving Partial Differential Equations (PDEs)
  • Phased Array Antenna Design.