Dr. Ana Vukovic joined us to talk about radome design testing using her computer modeling techniques at the University of Nottingham's George Green Institute for Electromagnetics Research lab. Testing radomes complete with lightning diverter strips is a game-changer. Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.

Her team can test radomes complete with lightning diverter strips to get accurate modeling before physical parts are created. Her team at the University of Nottingham, including Dr. Trevor Benson (trevor.benson@nottingham.ac.uk) and Dr. Phillip Sewell (phillip.sewell@nottingham.ac.uk), are doing incredible work to push the limits of computational modeling in the aerospace and other industries. Contact Dr. Ana Vukovic at ana.vukovic@nottingham.ac.uk or visit the University of Nottingham at https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/ggiemr/index.aspx

Transcript - Dr. Ana Vukovic on Computer Modeling for Radome Design Testing with Lightning Diverter Strips

https://youtu.be/l9o7BwL4dc8

Dan: And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightning protection. All right, welcome back. We've got another great episode of struck actually a special episode today.

so Allen, we've got another, really good segment with Dr. Ana Vukovich out of the George Green, Center for Electromagnetics Research out of the University of Nottingham. And, what are we, what are we talking about today?

Allen Hall: We're talking about a paper that is being published this summer. That. They at the University of Nottingham had put together, which looks like the performance of radar homes installed sort of on aircraft with the lightning protection on the radar.

And so usually when we model, we're just looking at the, our performance of itself of the radar, basically the thickness and the dielectric constant of the radar and whatever the antenna is behind it. That's basically the basics of trying to get an antenna pattern out of that. Cause you can model the antenna and you can model the radon and then you can kind of combine the two together to simulate.

What that would look like RF wise, the real key to the University of Nottingham's approach is that they can actually install lightning protection on the radar, which is the next level up, because the RF performance of the radar is not just, or the radar itself, but everything else that's on it, including paint coatings and diverted strips and whatever else is going to be on the radar, erosion boots, things of that sort.

That's been very difficult to model in the past, but Nottingham has broken through that barrier. And is able to not only simulate, the effects of diverted stress, but like accurately do it. So their, their modeling has very F really, really capable meshing of small objects, but it also does larger object too.

So you can get to the fine detail, a diverter strip, like a segment, a diverter strip--like StrikeTape--on top of a larger radome, like on an Airbus A380 radome and get performance numbers, which is unheard of.

Dan: So this paper, Impact of In-situ Radome on Lighting Diverter Strips on Antenna Performance was written by dr. Ana Vukovic, Dr. Phillip Sewell and Dr. Trevor Benson. So I mean, a pretty impressive group.