Electromagnetic wave simulation of honeycomb sandwich structures by 3D volume integral equations

The shape of the honeycomb core must be considered in the analysis of the problem of electromagnetic wave scattering in a honeycomb sandwich structure at high frequency. The three-layer sandwich structure has the characteristic of having a very small dielectric region with respect to its entire volume, since it has a structure in which the upper and lower skin sandwich between them a honeycomb core which contains many honeycomb-shaped holes. On the other hand, volume integral equations have the advantage of discretizing only the dielectric region, since only the polarized electric current of the dielectric region is an unknown. Thus, electromagnetic wave simulation of the three-layer honeycomb sandwich structure by using volume integral equations is considered to be an effective means for large-scale precision analyses. This paper reports a numerical computing method that takes account of the shape of the honeycomb core, applying three-dimensional volume integral equations to the electromagnetic wave scattering problem of the three-layer honeycomb sandwich structure., and the results of code verification by means of the optical theorem and its reciprocity are presented. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed numerical computing method is shown by identifying the effects of the honeycomb core on the electrical field intensity distribution inside the skin. (C) 2001 Scripta Technica.