Envelope radar cross section analysis of faired composite bodies

Tbe purpose of this dissertation is to extend the available analytic techniques for defining realistic geometries to simulate radar scattering structures, and to extend the application of the "envelope technique" to compute the first order high frequency radar cross section (RCS) of such structures in an efficient way.;A class of radar scattering targets can be modelled by connecting canonical shapes with elliptic cross sections, such as disks, cone frustrums, ellipsoids and ogives. In order to more closely model real objects, it is necessary to fair the wedge junctions between the shapes. Analytic fairing of isolated scattering bodies, as well as structures with a main body and one or more side bodies intersecting it, is studied in this dissertation.;In a high frequency analysis, scattering bodies are assumed to be large in terms of the wavelength of the incident electromagnetic field, so that their far zone backscattered field (or RCS) patterns can be found by vector addition of contributions from distinct scattering centers. The contributions considered in this dissertation include diffracted fields (computed using the Uniform Geometrical Theory of Diffraction) and reflected fields (computed using Geometrical Optics). Physical Optics and Equivalent Current techniques are used in caustic regions.;RCS patterns have, in general, many oscillations. In the envelope technique, the envelopes of such patterns are obtained by adding individual contributions in phase. This technique can use larger angular increments for data points than would be required for conventional methods. This inherent efficiency is employed in order to compute full volumetric RCS patterns. The emphasis is then on shorter computation time and on identifying only the major characteristics of an RCS pattern, which is obtained from a first order analysis. Application of the envelope technique to perfectly conducting, faired, composite bodies is successfully studied in this dissertation.