Hybrid PZT Coated Prime Fed Spacecraft Antenna Reflectors Development And Testing - A Novel Concept

Although Smart / Intelligent materials can be used for damping of thin flexible structural systems, they have some practical limitations in the domain of microwave antenna applications. This is due to, Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI ) & Electro-Magnetic Coupling (EMC ) issues at higher transmit & receive radio frequencies. In this paper, an attempt has been made to investigate the use of thin layers of highly sensitive ferroelectrically soft piezo electric ceramic material powders in lieu of Magnetostrictive powders for improving the efficiency of Prime Fed parabolic antennas. This investigation is on Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastic ( GFRP ) composite materials at ambient temperature for microwave antenna applications. Piezo ceramic hybrid polymeric coatings on parabolic reflectors have been envisaged to prevent EMI interference for antenna applications. To facilitate a simple proof of concept exercise at present, the non-linear effects and hysteresis have been ignored in the Finite Element Analysis (FEA). FE model with piezo layer has been generated in ATILA, a software for modeling smart structures and structural systems for piezo coated reflector. However, the material hysteresis losses and non linearities of the smart materials have not been considered in the model to simplify the proof of concept exercise.