Influence of External Store on Electromagnetic ScatteringCharacteristics of Aircraft

Abstract

The aircraft shape could be changed by external equipment, thus the stealth performance could be also influenced. In order to study the variation trend and law of electromagnetic scattering characteristics with different angles and frequency, based on the electromagnetic models of aircraft with and without external equipment, the RCS curves of different frequencies and different pitch angles are simulated by the physical optics method. And RCS curves’ distribution characteristics and pitch angle characteristics of the two models are analyzed. The definition of RCS relative increment is proposed to analyze the influence of external equipment. The results show that, in the angle domain on nose direction, the arithmetic mean values of the model with external store in different pitch angles appears “W” type distribution, and the model without external store appears inverted “V” distribution. The model with external store appears inverted “V” type distribution on the circumferential direction. The relative increments appear “W” type distribution in angular domain on nose direction, and their values are about 10～25 dB. And the circumferential distribution of relative increments appears oscillation, and the values are about 7～17 dB.

Keywords

• external store
• electromagnetic scattering
• stealth
• aircraft
• radar cross section