| Panel antenna of one particular airborne radar with diameter exceeds800mm, made of aluminum alloy that can be strengthened by heat treatment, is a high-precision part that contains complex multilayered thin-wall and cavity. For the antenna, the dimensional accuracy is the vital challenge to realize the performance. To fulfill the requirement of installation and electrical properties, the dimensional accuracy of the panel antenna must reach:straightness less than1.0mm, Rms less than0.3, and tensile strength higher than190MPa. As the panel antenna is one of the key components of the radar and the cost of its machining process is very high, the failure of panel originated from the heat-treatment process may lead to a considerable loss.In this study, we investigated the heat-treatment process and obtained a set of optimal parameters. Based on the deformation situation of the panel antennas, we used the compute stimulation method to study the deformation mechanism of the panel. The3-dimensional geometrical models with regarding to the components and the craft equipments are built with the software of Pro/E. The software of Fluent was utilized to simulate the cooling role of flow field; the heat exchange between the solid component (panel antenna) and the flow field (cooling role) was carried out by MPCCI. The analysis based on the stimulation indicates that the present of craft equipments raises the in-homogeneity of thermal field of the antenna, and, in consequence, increase the geometrical distortion. Depending on the simulation analysis, the heat-treatment process was optimized and the geometrical distortion was decreased, meanwhile the strength of panel antenna was also increased. By this study, the panel antenna quality is improved effectively after the heat-treatment. |
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