Construction Research Of An Inflatable Ground Antenna

Relating to the mechanical deployable antenna,inflatable antenna has the merits of folding small in size,high reliability,light weight and low cost so as to become the research hotspot in antenna in recent years.It has a good development prospect in the field of future communication.The domestic research on the structure of the inflatable has a late start and there are not much studies of the foundation problems.The research on inflatable antenna mostly concentrated in the space inflatable parabolic antenna reflector surface precision of measurement and in the simulation analysis etc.For the construction research of the inflatable ground antenna are rare.Based on this,this subject mainly researched the construction of the ground inflatable antenna,including material test,the determination of the initial form of antenna reflector,the production processing,the antenna prototype performance testing,etc.The project is hopefully to provide benefit guide and instructions for this type of antenna's industrialization.First of all,on the basis of domestic and foreign paper,we summarized the advantages of inflatable structures and its research status at home and abroad.The material's mechanical performance was tested.The result showed that the primary materials can meet requirements of the simulating prototype antenna.Meanwhile the material has to be very low cost.Secondly,the necessity to define the reflector's initial structure was discussed by combining the common parabolic surface forming methods and the feasibility of the production processing.The model of spherical ground-based inflatable antenna was made by finite element software ANSYS.The model was analyzed by inverse iteration method,after that,the initial form of the antenna's reflector was fixed.The results indicated that the inverse iteration method had a higher efficiency,an accurate initial form and less times' computing.Besides that,we also gave a brief introduction about the way of the cutting line arrangement and surface development to the reflector and spherical outer garment.Again,the process to make the antenna's prototype was preliminarily determined according to the experience of exploration.Meanwhile the antenna material's cutting and splicing models were designed.Then,the paper introduced the adhesive between every different parts of the antenna system.We also made a 1.8-meter antenna prototype on the basis of the detailed plan.The paper gave detail description of the production process and matters.Finally,we summarized some conclusions of this subject and pointed out some shortages and some suggestions for further researches,which could provide some valuable references for the manufacture of the antenna.