V. V. Bodryshev1, A. A. Larin2
1 Moscow Aviation Institute (National Research University) (Moscow, Russia)
2 Kaluga-based instrument-making plant “Typhoon” JSC (Kaluga, Russia)

1 soplom@mail.ru, 2 larintema@ya.ru

Various radio-transparent shelters (fairings) are used to protect the antenna equipment of radar stations from environmental influences. The main electrotechnical requirement for these products is the need to introduce minimal EMW (electromagnetic wave) distortion while maintaining strength and protective properties. Composite materials based on sotoplasts or foams, which have an extremely low influence on the EMW passing through them, are widely used. Exposure of radio-transparent shelter (RTS) to external unfavorable factors causes gradual but inevitable destruction of its surface, contributes to delamination of fiberglass, deteriorates its mechanical strength, leads to flow of water into the formed cavities (cracks and delaminations), which inevitably affects radio transparency. In the stages of production and maintenance it is important to have a tool to detect and localize defects in their design, to estimate the size and boundaries of the detected defects. A new method of fairing defectoscopy has been proposed, which allows to detect defects by measuring the energy loss and the EMW phase incursion to estimate their size and shape. The proposed method is based on the direct measurement of the RF parameters (loss and phase incursion) through a predetermined grid of control points. By processing the obtained data array, the detection and localization of defects is performed using receptor models.

Practical tests of the proposed method have been conducted to evaluate its resolving power. During the tests, defects with a relative size of more than 0.3λ have been successfully detected.

Bodryshev V.V., Larin A.A. Defectoscopy of large fairings based on the measurement of energy losses and electromagnetic wave phase incursion. Description and practical tests. Antennas. 2024. № 5. P. 47–57. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18127/j03209601-202405-05 (in Russian)

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