SLENDERNESS APPROXIMATIONS IN RCS ESTIMATION - THE SIMPLEST 2-D CASE

Many practical boundary value problems in engineering and physics invo lve such complicated geometries that solutions are possible only with numerical methods and then only with considerable computing power. Suc h methods have no significant design (inverse) capability and almost n o appeal to physical intuition. However, many configurations of intere st (high speed aircraft, airfoils, etc.) are "slender" in the sense th at most of the surface does not deviate far from a mean plane. Great a dvantage has been taken of this fact in aerodynamics to produce a rich variety of approximate theories that avoid the two major drawbacks fo r numerical methods mentioned above. There appear to be no such theori es in the electromagnetic case, and the purpose of this article is to introduce one for the simplest possible problems. It is shown that the resulting slender approximation for two-dimensional scattering with a n infinite conducting ground plane is almost as simple as its zero fre quency counterpart. It is also shown with computed examples that this theory is remarkably robust and surprisingly accurate.