The Choice of Mesh Size and Integration Points Number for the Electrostatically Controlled Membrane Antenna Structural-Electromagnetic Coupling Model

It is of great significance for the improvement of the computational efficiency of the electrostatically controlled membrane antenna (ECMA) structural-electromagnetic coupling model through the choice of appropriate mesh size and integration points number. In this paper, the physical optics formulation is used to analyze the radiation pattern of the ECMA surface, and the finite element method is applied to the electrostatic-structural coupling analysis. An expression for the relation between the mesh size, the focal length of the parabolic antenna, and the wavelength is developed based on the discretization error analysis of the triangular mesh approximating the parabolic surface. Moreover, the integration points number in each triangular mesh is determined by the numerical evaluation of the physical optics integral. Numerical results show that the proposed method improves the computing efficiency by about 87% compared with the referenced method.