Third Week of Project

We are currently trying to simulate the RCS of a complex object. The complex object is broken down into several components which consist of simple shaped objects as shown in Figure 1. Then the individual RCS of each components are summed together to obtain the approximate value of the total RCS. This method is not very accurate but it provides a good overview of the RCS of a complicated structure.

Figure 1. RCS of Structures. (Taken from J. F. Ralph, Avionics AERO230 Lecture Notes, University of Liverpool, 2012)

For this project, we chose to simulate the RCS of Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, a military transport aircraft as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Diagram of Lockheed C-5 Galaxy (Taken from http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/c-5-specs.htm)

We represent the aircraft with series of points as shown in Figure 3 to indicate our rough assumption of the objects' shapes.

Figure 3. A sketch of the structure's representation.

Assumptions made:
1) Sphere                                : Point 1
2) Cylinder                              : Point 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 19 & 20
3) Rectangular Flat Plate         : Point 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 25, 26, 27, 28
4) Rectangular Dihedral Corner : Point 7, 8, 9 10, 21, 22, 23, 24

Then, the approximate total RCS can be calculated using the formula that is shown in Figure 3.