High Fidelity Electromagnetic Design, Prediction and Optimization of Airborne Radomes

Under this SBIR solicitation N202-114, the goal is to build on the strengths of HyPerComp’s development in the HDphysics suite of tools to meet NAVAIR’s requirements in solving large-scale problems in computing antenna performance parameters of an installed system as well as develop methodologies to optimize the design of a radome covering an antenna. This requires enhancements to both the CAD-to-grid process as well as the high-order solvers in being able to model the material complexities and interior details and shape of the radome.   First, HyPerComp proposes to add features to its surface representation and 3D gridding software that will minimize the manual inputs to developing an initial grid and guide any re-gridding required by radome design modifications. Such modifications may include insertions, local variations in radome layer thickness, and tuning of layer electromagnetic properties.  Second, major efficiency improvements will be implemented in the solution process: the set of grid cell types used by the solver will be expanded to include both curved-surface and extruded cells, and high-order absorbing boundary conditions will be implemented to limit the size of the computational domain exterior to the radome. The use of these additional cell types will minimize the total number of unknowns being solved for, and together with the smaller size of the domain, will greatly reduce the time required to generate a complete solution. The radome capability that HyPerComp will develop under this SBIR effort will be called RDAM (Radome Design Analysis Module) that will be seamlessly integrated into the HDphysics suite of tools.