Structural design and realization of a mechanical reconfigurable antenna

Based on a kind of carbon fiber honeycomb sandwich structure, a mechanical reconfigurable reflector antenna is designed in this paper. By building the reconfigurable reflector analysis model, a calculation method is provided. Because the surface accuracy after reconfiguration is mainly determined by the reflector stiffness and the number of actuators, therefore, the honeycomb height and the skin thickness are studied as well as the number of actuators. And the reflector stiffness will increase with the increase of the skin thickness and the honeycomb height. When the honeycomb height is 2mm and the skin thickness is 0.28mm, the reflector stiffness meets reconfiguration's need. To have an accurate elastic modulus of the sandwich structure, the equivalent modulus is measured 23.8GPa by the three-point bending experiment. To obtain a good surface accuracy for any target reflector, actuators are arranged in a distributed manner. Then, the number of actuators is optimized. With the increase of the number of actuators, the RMS (Root Mean Square) value of the reflector after reconfiguration will decrease. When the number of actuators is 83, the surface accuracy after reconfiguration is 0.497mm RMS. To ensure the force of every actuator is less than the actuator threshold 400N, the max force of each actuator during reconfiguration is calculated. To gain the effect of actuator failure, the failure of different number of actuators is analyzed in the worst case. When one actuator is out of work, the worst surface accuracy after reconfiguration is 0.733mm RMS. To prove that simulation results are consistent with test results, the reconfiguration flow is provided, and the reconfiguration test is done. The test surface accuracy after reconfiguration is 0.530mm RMS. It's identical with the simulation surface accuracy 0.480mmRMS. Meanwhile, electrical performance simulation results are identical with test results. The gain is more than 32DBi. Above results show that the design method and simulation results of the reconfigurable reflector antenna are feasible and the requirements of the reconfigurable reflector are satisfied well.