Thermal Deformation Modeling for Phased Array Antenna Compensation Control.

Thermal compensation control can correct errors caused by the thermal deformation of phased array antenna (PAA) panels. Thermal deformation of the panel is needed to calculate the compensation value. While the PAA is working, thermal deformation is unconditional to measure, but predicting it by temperature is feasible. However, thermal deformation is also affected by other factors, such as the structural shape, assembly method, and material parameters, and it is difficult to measure these parameters of PAA because of the complex structure. In contrast, the measurement method of the temperature and thermal deformation of the PAA in the laboratory is much easier. Therefore, a comprehensive influence parameters (CIPs)-finite element method (FEM) method was proposed in this study, it can extract the influence of above parameters on thermal deformation from temperature and thermal deformation measurement data and build a thermal deformation prediction model. Experiments have verified that the CIPs-FEM can greatly reduce the difficulty of thermal deformation modeling and have a high prediction accuracy.