Radar Absorbing Material | Radar Absorbing Paint

This page covers basics of Radar Absorbing Material and Radar Absorbing Paint. It mentions vendors, manufacturers, suppliers of Radar Absorbing Material and Paint.

Absorbers in general are classified into following two types:
1. Impedance matching absorbers
2. Resonant Absorbers

Types of Radar Absorbing Material

As we know when propagating wave is made incidental to the absorbing interface, it will get reflected. The magnitude of reflection depends on incident waveform and absorbing medium upon which it is incidented. Based on these there are three main types of radar absorbing materials. These types are manufactured to reduce impedance step between incident media and absorbing media.
1. Pyramidal
2. Tapered
3. Matched

radar absorbing material

Pyramidal Absorbers:
This type provides gradual impedance transition from air to absorber. The shape of pyramidal absorber is shown in the figure. As shown it is cone like structure which is perpendicular to the surface. Height and periodicity of structure is about 1 wavelength long. This type of radar absorbing material has operating frequency above which it provides very high attenuation.

Tapered Loading Absorbers:
This type is advantageous over pyramidal type due to its thin size, but they offer very poor performance and hence it is desired to vary impedance gradient over one or more wavelengths. The material is made of combination of low loss and lossy materials. Lossy part is dispersed parallel to surface with its gradident perpendicular to surface which increases into body of material.

Matching Layer Absorbers:
The purpose of this type is to reduce the thickness of above type. This type of absorber uses absorbing layer in between incident and absorbing media. The impedance of this transition layer is between the front and rear layers.
Z2 = (Z1*Z3)0.5

Resonant Materials:
This materials are known as tuned absorber or quarter wavelength absorber. It includes Dallenbach layer absorber, Salisbury Screen and Jaumann absorber.

Circuit Analog Radar Absorbing Material (i.e. RAM) and Magnetic RAM:
Initially Jaumann anf Salisbury have been developed using only resistive sheets. Later on capacitive and inductive materials have been added to achieve broadband performance. These are known as resonant absorbers.

Magnetic Radar Absorbing Material:
It is made of carbonyl iron as well as hexaferrites. This type can absorb frequencies in MHz and GHz frequency ranges.

Other Absorbing Materials


Radar Absorbing Material Description
Carbon Anechoic chamber uses absorber made of coating mats of animal hair mixed with carbon black.
Metal and Metal Particles Broadband absorbers are made of solid aluminium metal particles or other metals such as iron oxide, powdered iron etc.
Polypyrrole It is very stable in air. It is used along with other materials such as latex, polymer blends and fibers.
Polyaniline It is very inexpensive and readily available. It is conducting polymer widely used in absorber fabrication.

Radar Absorbing Material and Paint vendors, manufacturers, suppliers

Following are the manufacturers of Radar Absorbing Material and Paint:
• ARC Technologies
• Powder Processing & Technology, LLC
• IDSI Products, Inc.
• NACCO Aerospace
• Holland Shielding Systems
• Laird Technologies

RADAR Tutorial RELATED LINKS

Refer following radar tutorial links which covers radar measurements, doppler radar, FMCW radar, radar bands, radar scope, weather radar, radar range and resolution, ground radar etc.
Radar Measurements   Doppler Radar   FMCW RADAR   RADAR BANDs   RADAR SCOPE   Weather Radar   Ground Penetrating Radar System  RADAR RANGE and RESOLUTION 

Radar calculators

Following are useful radar calculators to calculate radar range, radar PRF, radar resolution etc.
Radar Range calculator   Radar PRF vs Range   Radar Range Resolution 

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