On the influence of the welding process on electronic performance of planar slotted waveguide antennas

Abstract

The Planar slotted waveguide antenna (PSWA) is a special kind of thin-walled waveguide cavity structure that is composed of the welded-three-layer wave-guiders such as radiating, coupling and exciting ones. The antenna performance is very much dependent upon the welding process. According to thermal elastic-plastic theory and the technique of birth-death element, the impact of different factors including cooling curves (temperature descendent gradient), solders and clamping cases during the welding process on the structural behavior (stress and distortion) and electronic deformation is studied. Then, based on structural-electronic coupled model about the relationship between structural deformation and electronic performance, the influence of structural distortion on an antenna's electronic performance referring to the gain and side-lobe level is explored. Finally, the proposed model and methodology are applied to numerical simulation of an airborne planar slot waveguide antenna with the diameter of 900 mm. The obtained conclusions are valuable to the practical welding process of this kind of antenna.