MODELLING AND MANUFACTURING OF MICROWAVE ABSORBER TILES FOR A CUBE STEALTH SATELLITE BY USING NANOSTRUCTURED COMPOSITE MATERIALS AND PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM

Cube Stealth Satellite is proposed for potential applications in defense system. Particularly face of satellite exposed to the Earth are made of nanostructured materials able to absorb radar surveillance electromagnetic wave, conferring stealth capability to the cube satellite. Microwave absorbing and shielding materials tiles are proposed using composite materials consisting in epoxy-resin and carbon nanotubes filler. In the paper, morphology, electric permittivity, and characteristic wave impedances of composite nanostructured materials are shown. Such data are used by the modeling algorithm to design the microwave absorbing and shielding face of cube satellite. The electromagnetic modeling takes into account for several incidence angles (0-80°), extended frequency band (4-18 GHz), and for the minimization of electromagnetic reflection and transmission coefficient. The evolutionary algorithm used for microwave multilayer absorbing structure modeling is Particle Swarm Optimization. Mathematical model of absorbing structure is finally experimentally validated by comparing electromagnetic simulation and measurement of the manufactured multilayer absorbing tile. Nanostrucutred composite materials manufacturing process and electromagnetic reflection measurements methods are described.