The Ventilation Design Simulation And Optimization Of Radome

Large radar radomes, an effective protection for radar antennas, have been adopted by most countries around the world. In China, they also have been widely used, especially in regions with severe natural conditions, so that radar’s functions can be ensured. Therefore, they play an important role in China’s economy construction and national defense. However, their protection may also bring some side effects, such as isolating the air inside and outside the radome and hindering radar’s heat dissipation, which may shorten radar’s life-span and reduce the measurement accuracy. As a result, we are faced with the problem of how to solve the heat dissipation. Based on several examples of radome ventilation and cooling in reality and the basic theory of heat transfer, this work studies the heat exchange forms of radomes and addresses the problem of improving the heat exchange efficiency, meanwhile, simulates radome ventilation by using computer simulation and modeling technologies. Contributions of this work are as follows.1. Analyzing the forms of heat exchanges in the radome. Based on the natural environment and working condition of radomes, factors that most affect their heat are studied, such as solar radiation at noon, heat caused by the absorption in electromagnetic radiation from the radar, and heat emitting from the operation of the radar antenna and other components, etc. We also explore the forms of heat transfer, for instance, heat conduction and heat convection, and their computation. The theoretical of heat transfer and flow has been discussed. According to the requirement for the working condition of equipments in the radome, two different heat ventilation methods are proposed for experimental research.2. Studying the structurally grid division of truncated sphere radomes and its inner components. Since the radome model is comprised of components with complicated shapes, such as sphere, thin-walled, prism and cylinder, etc., it is difficult to build a model with a small number of grids with high quality, high computation accuracy, and good convergence. In this work, for the common 3/4 truncated radomes an approach to building high quality structural grids using ICEM CFD is proposed based on the model instructed by applying Pro/E. The reasons that lead to structural grids with poor quality are concluded and the corresponding solution is proposed.3. Comparing five different ventilation methods by using simulation. For the different methods, we simulate the radome in ANSYS CFX, which provides a visual simulation result. Meanwhile, a better heat ventilation method and a general rule of improving the heat exchange efficiency in the radome are founded through comparatively analyzing the temperature field and the fluid velocity field.4. Summarizing the factors that affect the heat exchange efficiency in the radome. According to the simulation results, factors that most influent the temperature control in the radome are found, such as the shape of the components, the thermal performance parameter of the materials used by the components, the speed of the fluid flowing through the heat exchange surface and the corresponding physical parameter of the fluid, etc. Therefore, a solid theoretical and practical foundation for further optimizing the ventilation is laid.