Design and Fabrication of Composite Smart Structures for Communication

복합재료를 이용한 통신용 지능구조물 설계 및 제작

The present study aims to design electrically and structurally effective antenna structures in order that the structural surface itself could become the antenna. The basic design concept is composite sandwich structure in which microstrip antenna is embedded and this is termed composite smart structure (CSS). The most important outstanding problem is that composite materials of structural function cannot be used without reducing antenna efficiency. Unfortunately, such materials have high electrical loss. This is a significant design problem that needs to be solved in practical applications. Therefore, the effect of composites facesheet on antenna performances is studied in the first stage. Changes in the gain of microstrip antenna due to composites facesheet have been determined. 'Open condition' is defined when gain is maximized and is a significant new concept in the design of high-gain antennas considering bandwidth in practical application. The open condition can be made with any thickness of outer facesheet by controlling its position. In the design of CSS, glass/epoxy composites and Nomex honeycomb were used with exploiting open condition. Experiments, confirm that the gain is improved (over 11 dBi) and the bandwidth is also as wide as specified in our requirements (over 10% at 12.2 GHz). With the open condition, wideband antenna can be integrated with mechanical structures without reducing any electrical performances, as confirmed experimentally here.