A new stitched-plain weave fabric composite structure with reduced broadband radar cross-section.

In this paper, a new stitch-plain weave fabric composite (SPWF) by acupuncture technology is proposed. Two patterns are designed, one is a typical chessboard layout (SPWF-1), and the other is a layout optimized by a genetic algorithm (SPWF-2). Simulated and experimental results show that SPWF can disperse electromagnetic wave energy in all directions and effectively reduce the radar cross-section (RCS) in the frequency range of 12.5 GHz−26.5 GHz, and the maximum RCS reduction for SPWF reaches −40 dB. The tensile modulus and strength of SPWF-1 are predicted by finite element method, and the results are in good agreement with the experimental data. In addition, a new optimization objective function is proposed to design the patterns of SPWF-2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]