Integrated design and performance study of microwave absorption and load bearing for an embedded honeycomb superstructure

Compared with coated absorbing materials, honeycomb absorbing structural have raised widespread attention due to their better impedance matching, ability to provide multiple reflections and serve as mechanical structures. However, traditional honeycomb structure still has a huge space for improvement under the traction of wide and strong absorption performance, as well as the consideration of thin and light structural design. This article takes the developed multi-walled carbon nanotubes/carbonyl iron/epoxy resin composite material(MWCNT/CI/EP) as the absorbing material, and then embeds it into the traditional honeycomb absorbing structure through a special multi-scale superstructure design to acquire a new type of honeycomb superstructure that combines excellent absorbing performance and mechanical properties. The influencing factors such as structural parameters, incident angles, and polarization modes on the absorption performance of this superstructure was studied through simulation analyses. Research has shown that the designed embedded honeycomb superstructure can achieve full frequency coverage of less than −10 dB within 2-18 GHz, with a minimum of −39 dB, a maximum of −10.4 dB and an average level of −18 dB. The embedded honeycomb superstructure designed in this article has made breakthroughs in terms of absorption and mechanical properties compared to honeycomb structures with the same areal density, providing a certain inspiration for the research of structural and functional composite design.