Structural-electromagnetic simulation coupling tool for airborne antenna arrays

This paper describes a tool developed to couple structural and electromagnetic simulations. The motivation for this work is to aid in the design and characterization of next-generation airborne remote sensing platforms and sensors. While several multi-physics simulation tools are available for coupling a variety of simulation software, our application is unique in that we wish to simulate relatively large structural deformations that can be used to assess the as-installed EM performance of the deformed geometry. Currently available multi-physics programs either do not support structural-EM coupling or are not robust enough to handle the different geometric abstractions that must be made in each of the programs. We have developed a methodology and a set of algorithms to couple simulation types using existing physics-based simulation software. The tool works well for regular FEM quad meshes, and it can produce geometry deformed by the structural FEM for EM analysis. Simulated results are compared with measurements for both a singular dipole element as well as a four-element antenna array.