Design of Salisbury screen absorbers using dielectric lossy sheets

Jinbong Kim
1
Composite Materials Laboratory, Korea Institute of Materials Science, Changwon, Gyeongnam 641-010, Korea

In this study, we present design and manufacturing technology for the Salisbury screen type radar absorbing structure (RAS) in X-
band. The RAS is composed of a dielectric lossy sheet and an E-glass fabric/epoxy composite laminate as the spacer. This RAS has a
broader absorbing bandwidth and much thinner spacer than those of the conventional one which uses a 377 Ω/□ resistive sheet for the
impedance matching with air. The good characteristics of the proposed ones are thanks to the high dielectric constant of the sheets. The
dielectric lossy sheets are composited of carbon nano composites, in which the filler contents of carbon nano materials are specially
designed to get the proper complex permittivity of the composites.

Index Terms— Composites, Dielectric lossy sheet, Radar absorbing Structure, Salisbury screen, X-band

the dielectric lossy sheet instead of the resistive sheet of high

I. INTRODUCTION conductivity. The dielectric lossy sheet of this study has high
dielectric constant in addition to the high electrical
T HE TECHNOLOGY on radar (or microwave) absorber is a
great topic in the military and nonmilitary fields. In the conductivity. The RAS is composed of a dielectric lossy sheet,
a spacer and a PEC (Perfect Electric Conductor).
military field, this technology is directly related to the stealth
capability [1]. In nonmilitary field, microwave absorbing is h ™ s ˆ Œ™GX s ˆ Œ™Gi s ˆ Œ™GN
one of solutions to radar interference between the big civil in0  ini 1 in N 1
objects and the air traffic control radars or the military
wlj
surveillance radars.
R 1 i N
The Salisbury screen type absorber is one of the  N 1  0
0 1 ˎˎ i ˎˎ N
representative resonance type absorbers [2]. This absorber has
0 d1 di dN
many advantages in its simplicity in the structure and the
electromagnetic design methodology but disadvantages in the p•›Œ™ˆŠŒ p•›Œ™ˆŠŒ p•›Œ™ˆŠŒ p•›Œ™ˆŠŒ p•›Œ™ˆŠŒ p•›Œ™ˆŠŒ
thickness and the comparatively narrow absorbing bandwidth. X Y i iRX N NRX

The E-glass fabric impregnated with epoxy resin is a good
structural material in aerospace industry. This composite
material is an insulating material of about 4.7 in dielectric
constant and also can be dielectric lossy sheet by mixing
carbon nano materials into the epoxy resin [3, 4].
In this study, we present a new concept for RAS using the
dielectric lossy sheet of carbon nano composites instead of the
377 Ω/□ resistive sheet in Salisbury screen type absorber. The
new RAS takes advantage of the structural simplicity of the
conventional Salisbury screen absorber, having a thinner
spacer and a broader bandwidth.
II. DESIGN CONCEPT AND THEORETICAL BASIS FOR RAS
Total Reflected Wave = R - ( e1 + e2 + e3 )
r ) of the media that the electromagnetic
R Dielectric
r ) is
Incident Wave e1 e2 e3 Lossy Sheet
Spacer
Fig. 2. Schematic drawing of EM characteristics in the multi-layer absorber
The RAS can be treated as a multi-layer absorber. The
governing equation of multi-layer absorber can be achieved
from the transmission line method. Fig. 2 shows the schematic
drawing of a multi-layer absorber. The reflection coefficient
( R ) of the model can be expressed by (1).
in0    0 , where i 1  i    tanh i d i  , and
R in  i in i i
0 
in   0 i  in tanh i d i 
 N 1  0 (1)
In (1), the characteristic impedance (  i ) and the
propagation constant (  i ) are functions of permittivity ( r )
and permeability (
wave travels. For dielectric absorbers, the permeability (
unity. So, the characteristic impedance (  i ) and propagation
constant (  i ) can be written as i  1 / r ,i and

PEC : Metal Reflector  i  j 2f r ,i / c , where c is the speed of light in air. The

input impedance  ini 1 in the (i-1)th layer can be calculated
Fig. 1. Schematic drawing of the proposed RAS.

Fig. 1 shows the design concept of the RAS for this study
which is very similar to the normal Salisbury screen but uses
___________________________________
978-1-4244-8559-8/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
recursively from the ith properties, where the characteristic
impedance of air  0 =1. The RAS in this study can be regarded
as a 2-layer radar absorber.


 III. RESULT AND DISCUSSION  AC  2f 0 r

, where 0 is the dielectric property of
The dielectric lossy sheets were made with carbon nano vacuum or air. When we calculate the surface resistivity ( Rs )
materials including carbon black (HG-1P of LINZI
from the thickness of sheets ( d ) and the their AC conductivity
HUAGUANG Chemical Ind. China), carbon nanofiber (CNF)
(PYROGRAH-III (PR-19-XT-LHT) of APPLIED SCIENCE
Inc. USA) and carbon nanotube (CNT) (CM-95 of HANWHA
NANOTECH Co. Ltd., Korea). The each carbon nano material
was dispersed in epoxy resin and the resin was coated on the
E-glass fabric. The dielectric lossy sheet was made of the
stacked E-glass fabric/epoxy. The spacer is pure E-glass
fabric/epoxy, of which complex permittivity is 4.659 – j0.171.
The complex permittivity of carbon nano composite is
dependent to the carbon nano material. Table I shows the
optimal design results for the RASs.
(  AC ) using Rs  1 / d AC , we can find that all the calculated
results are nearly 377 Ω/□. It should be noted that the
dielectric constant of the sheet is very high and causes the
reduction of the spacer thickness. Fig. 3 shows the
representative graph of reflection loss versus frequency. Fig. 4
shows the comparison of the -10 dB bandwidth of
conventional Salisbury screen absorbers and the proposed ones.
We can see that the absorbing bandwidths of the newly
proposed ones are broader than the conventional ones even
though they have thinner spacers.
0.0

TABLE I -10.0

reflection loss [dB]

OPTIMAL PROPERTIES OF THE COMPONENTS FOR VARIOUS RASS -20.0

DIELECTRIC LOSSY SHEETS -30.0

CB CNF CNT -40.0

Filler content [wt.%] 5.19 2.11 4.71 -50.0

-60.0
Thickness [mm] 0.250 0.220 0.252
-70.0
8.0x109 9.0x109 1.0x1010 1.1x1010 1.2x1010
Complex permittivity 13.13 – 27.97 – 19.95 –
frequency [Hz]
at 10 GHz j18.50 j21.45 j18.63
Fig. 3. Reflection loss of the RAS designed at 10 GHz.
SPACER
Thickness [mm] 2.800 2.275 2.469 8x109
Salisbury Screen Type Absorber
7x109 Newly Proposed Absorber
Fig. 3 shows the complex permittivity of the dielectric lossy
-10 dB Bandwidth

6x109
sheet containing CB, CNF, CNT respectively.
100.0 5x109
Carbon Black (CB) 5.19 wt%
80.0 9
real part of permittivity, ' 4x10
imag part of permittivity, "
60.0 9
3x10
40.0
9
2x10
20.0 2.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 6.00 7.00 8.00
thickness [mm]
0.0
100.0 Fig. 2. Comparison of -10 dB bandwidth between newly proposed absorber
Carbon Nano Fiber (CNF) 2.11 wt%
and conventional Salisbury screen type absorbers.
80.0
real part of permittivity, '
permittivity, ', "

imag part of permittivity, "

60.0
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
40.0
This work was supported by New & Renewable Energy
20.0
R&D Program (2008-N-WD08-P-02) under the Korea
0.0
100.0
Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE).
Carbon Nano Tube (CNT) 4.71 wt%
80.0
real part of permittivity, '
60.0 imag part of permittivity, " REFERENCES
40.0 [1] K. J. Vinoy and R. M. Jha, Radar Absorbing Materials from Theory
20.0
to Design and Characteristics. Boston/Dordrecht/London: Kruwer
Academic Publishers, 1996.
0.0 [2] W. W. Salisbury, "Absorbent body for electromagnetic waves,"
9 10 10 10
0.0 5.0x10 1.0x10 1.5x10 2.0x10
U.S.Patent No. 2,599,944, 1952.
frequency [Hz]
[3] J.-B. Kim, et al., "Comparison study on the effect of carbon nano
Fig. 2. Complex permittivities of dielectric lossy sheets of carbon nano materials for single-layer microwave absorbers in X-band," Composites
composites which is composed E-glass/epoxy containing CB, CNF and CNT Science and Technology, vol. 68, pp. 2909-2916, 2008.
respectively. The filler contents are designed to be optimal for the RASs. [4] J.-B. Kim and C.-G. Kim, "Study on the semi-empirical model for
the complex permittivity of carbon nanocomposite laminates in
The relationship between AC conductivity (  AC ) and microwave frequency band," Composites Science and Technology, vol.
70, pp. 1748-1754, 2010.
imaginary part of the complex permittivity ( r ) is