Additively Manufactured Radomes

Missile radomes are a critical piece of modern military technology. As part of the missile body they protect the front of the missile and allow radio frequency (RF) signals used for guidance to pass through. Radome development is an artful engineering exercise that requires knowledge of materials, structures and radio frequency design and the manufacturing process is often costly and time consuming. An opportunity exists to use the emerging technology of additive manufacturing to fabricate radomes. Additive manufacturing provides opportunities to insert RF ‘windows’ or filters into the radome that may be difficult to achieve using traditional manufacturing. Additive manufacturing also provides complexity for free, or at least at a greatly reduced cost when compared to traditional manufacturing. Our proposed effort is broken into two one-year efforts. The first year of the effort will focus on the materials and additive manufacturing process for the radome structure while realizing a simple flat panel geometry. The second year of the effort will then take those materials and processes and apply them to a more complex curved structure that is representative of an actual radome design. The result of this proposed Sequential Phase II effort is the realization of material set, additive manufacturing process, and additive manufacturing toolset suitable for the realization of missile radomes with embedded multi-functional features.