A flexible and efficient resistive sheet boundary condition (RSBC) based hybrid finite element-boundary integral-multilevel fast multipole algorithm (FE-BI-MLFMA) is presented for computing electromagnetic scattering from inhomogeneous objects with microwave-absorbing honeycomb structures. In the proposed algorithm, each non-magnetic and high lossy material coated unit cell wall of the honeycomb is first approximated by the multilayered RSBC as a zero-thickness resistive sheet to eliminate the computational burden due to the extremely thin and multilayered characteristics of the coated unit cell wall. Then, the RSBC is incorporated into the FE-part of the FE-BI-MLFMA formulation. To further reduce the burden of meshing complicated objects involving cellular structures after RSBC approximation, the hybrid conformal and nonconformal domain decomposition method (DDM) of the FE-BI-MLFMA, which integrates the nonconformal Schwarz DDM-FE and the simplified discontinuous Galerkin (S-DG), is employed to bring significant flexibility and versatility in geometry modeling and mesh generating. Effective block low-rank multifrontal solver-based domain decomposition FEM-ABC preconditioner is constructed to speed up the solution of the FE-BI equations by using locally approximated integral operators for the BI part. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate the accuracy, capability and performance of the proposed algorithm, including a high-definition complicated fighter model with antenna array, multilayer dielectric radome and microwave-absorbing honeycomb structures.

We present in this letter an efficient numerical method for the analysis of electromagnetic scattering by inhomogeneous objects with arbitrarily oriented honeycomb radar absorbing structures. In this method, each cellular honeycomb structure is first homogenized as a diagonal anisotropic medium in local coordinate system by using a new hybrid Hashin–Shtrikman and Mori–Tanaka formula. Then, a Euler rotation matrix is employed for describing a honeycomb structure with arbitrary orientation in a global coordinate system by transforming a diagonal tensor into a general 3 × 3 tensor. Finally, the object with homogenized honeycomb structures are simulated by using the nonconformal domain decomposition finite element-boundary integral-multilevel fast multipole algorithm. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy, efficiency and capability of the proposed algorithm, including the scattering by a typical sandwich panel with honeycomb core, and a complicated fighter model which includes antenna array, dielectric radome and radar-absorbing honeycomb structure.

We propose in this paper a novel hybrid numerical modeling method for computing electromagnetic scattering from inhomogeneous targets containing honeycomb structures. In the proposed approach, the whole honeycomb structure is divided into the inner and outer two subregions. Each thin wall of a unit cell in the outer subregion is replaced by a zero-thickness surface, with the aid of a resistive sheet boundary condition (RSBC) to describe the electric and magnetic field discontinuities across the surface. Each unit cell in the inner subregion is homogenized by using the Hashin–Shtrikman and the Mori–Tanaka formulae. The two subregions are further divided into smaller subdomains by introducing the Robin-type transmission condition to couple subregion interfaces, as well as subdomain interfaces. The whole solution region is then discretized and solved using the nonconformal domain decomposition-based hybrid finite element–boundary integral–multilevel fast multipole algorithm (FE-BI-MLFMA). The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach exhibits a high accuracy, efficiency, and flexibility. Solutions of scattering by a wing-like object and a practical unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) model with honeycomb radar-absorbing structures are presented, showing the superior performance of the proposed algorithm.