Studies on the Effects of the Plasma Wake Flow Fields of Hypersonic Reentry Blunt Cone on Electromagnetic Wave

The propagation and scattering properties of electromagnetic (EM) waves interacting with the wake flow fields of hypersonic reentry blunt cone are studied by applying the Runge-Kutta exponential time differencing-finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) algorithm in this paper. The parameters of wake flow fields are obtained from the Fluent software. The numerical results show that the reentry plasma has a significant effect on EM wave propagation and scattering of the conductive blunt cone covered with plasma. The attenuation becomes more intense with an increase in the propagation distance due to absorbing and collision, and the reflection coefficients increase with the increase in the Mach number while the transmission coefficients decrease. On the other hand, the backscattering radar cross section (RCS) fluctuates with the varying Mach numbers and the EM wave frequencies at the given wake flow fields. The RCS always decreases with the increase in the plasma thickness of the wake flow fields. In addition, the weak magnetic field has little effect on the backscattering RCS, and the strong magnetic field will lead to the reduction of the backscattering RCS.