CHIN. PHYS. LETT. Vol. 30, No.

10 (2013) 107702

Effective Electromagnetic Parameters and Absorbing Properties for Honeycomb

Sandwich Structures with a Consideration of the Disturbing Term *
HU Ji-Wei()1 , HE Si-Yuan()1** , RAO Zhen-Min()1 ,
ZHU Guo-Qiang()1 , YIN Hong-Cheng()2
1)

School of Electronic Information, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072

2)
National Electromagnetic Scattering Laboratory, Beijing 100854

(Received 9 May 2013)

The interaction between particles cannot be ignored when a high frequency electromagnetic wave is incident
on a mixed media. Strong fluctuation theory with correlation function is a suitable method to describe the
problem. Materials with honeycomb sandwich structures with an absorber included are investigated. The effective
electromagnetic parameters and reflection coefficient of these materials are deduced and numerical results are
given. Compared with the method with a disturbing term not considered, this method shows better absorbing
properties.

DOI: 10.1088/0256-307X/30/10/107702
absorber and vacuum compose a two-phase mix, assuming that it is , we can calculate the equivalent parameters of . Secondly, and the external bone substrate compose another two-phase mix , then equivalent parameters of are the final results we need.
This is achieved by the strong fluctuation theory with
a disturbing term in the theory.
(b)
t

(a)

Bone
Substrate Vacuum

Absorber

Fig. 1. The configuration of a honeycomb composite: (a)

overview of the whole structure, (b) top view of one unit
cell.
Decompose

Bone
Substrate

Bone
Substrate

Absorber

Vacuum
Absorber

First
equivalent

Equivalent
parameters
A

Equivalent Sceond

In modern commercial and military applications,

a low reflection factor is crucial for anti-detection.
There are two ways to achieve this objective: one
is shaping, which relies on the work of the designer;
the other is using coated radar absorbing materials (RAMs).[16] Apart from the ordinary particle
medium material, the other important research branch
is the structural material,[711] especially the honeycomb structure,[12,13] because of its light weight, relatively high strength and stiffness, the material is
widely used as a sandwiched layer. To get the reflection coefficient, we have to know the electromagnetic parameters of materials. For mixed media, predicting the effective permittivity[14,15] is important.
Giordano[16] has calculated the dispersions of dielectric ellipsoids by using an effective medium theory.
However, the strong fluctuation theory[1719] is an effective method in microwave band, which has been
used in isotropic composites[20] and snow media.[21,22]
He et al.[2325] and Peng et al.[26] have used this
method to study the honeycomb or fiber fabric structures, the biggest drawback being that they are in the
long-wave quasi-static approximation[27] and they did
not consider the disturbing term of spherical particles. In this Letter, the strong fluctuation theory with
a disturbing term in the honeycomb structure is considered. Compared with the results in the literature,
better results are presented.
A honeycomb structure can be considered as an
implementation of the hexagonal lattice geometry as
shown in Fig. 1, which is composed by a bone substrate, absorberm and vacuum. Because of its embedded structure, it cannot be equivalent by tri-phase
effective parameters[19,26] directly. We choose twice
the two-phase steps to achieve this target.[23,24] Figure 2 demonstrates this process. Firstly, the internal

Vacuum

PACS: 77.84.Lf, 78.20.Ci

Equivalent
parameters
B

Fig. 2. Two-step equivalent flow chart of the honeycomb

with an absorber included.

In first-step equivalence, the mixed media are composed of two different materials: an absorber with permittivity and vacuum with permittivity . The
fractional volume occupied by the absorber is , and
the fractional volume occupied by the background
medium is (1 ).
From the viewpoint of random medium theory, the

* Supported

in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 61001059 and 60671040.
author. Email: siyuanhe@whu.edu.cn
2013 Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd
** Corresponding

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CHIN. PHYS. LETT. Vol. 30, No. 10 (2013) 107702

where 0 is the dielectric constant in vacuum, and

medium is characterized by a random permittivity

() = + (),

(1)

() = ,

(2)

() = 0,

(3)

where angular bracket stands for the ensemble average and corresponds to the spatial average on account
of the ergodic theorem, () is the fluctuation term
of the random medium. The average fluctuation to
the effective permittivity of the whole unit material
particle is zero, we have[19,26]

() =
= 0.
(4)
+ ( )
Here is the singular term of the dyadic Greens
function and determined by different correlation
functions.[28,29] Considering the interaction between
particles, the correlation function of the fluctuation of
() is
() ( ) = 2 (),

(5)

where () is the normalized correlation function,

is the normalized variance of fluctuation in an
isotropic medium,
=

( )2 (1 ) + ( )2
.
2

(6)

In principle, we can choose any correlation function as

well. It is the most important in that it can describe
the interaction between different grains. For a honeycomb structure with azimuthal symmetry, we consider
a correlation function as follows:[17,18]
( 2 + 2
|| )
() = exp

,
(7)
2

then

,
= 2
0 (2 + 1)
1

= 2
,
0 (2 + 1)

(8)

with
=

2
,
2

with the normalized variances of fluctuations for the

anisotropic material as follows:
)2
(

(1 )
=
0 + ( )
(
)2

+
,
0 + ( )
(
)2

(1 )
=
0 + ( )
)2
(

.
(12)
+
0 + ( )
We have

= .

(10)

(14)

= 2 + 0 ,
= 2 + 0 .

= + 0 ,

(13)

In Eq. (10), the second terms on the right, i.e. 0

and 0 , are caused by the disturbing term, as given
by Eqs. (11) and (12). If we do not consider these
terms, then the effective parameters are and
in the long-wave quasi-static approximation.
In the second step, by replacing and by the
bone substrate and equivalent parameter , following
Eqs. (4)(14), we have the final equivalent permittivity constant

(9)

where the -direction result is equal to the -direction,

and it is suppressed in the following.
Solving Eqs. (4) and (8), we can obtain effective
parameters , and . With the disturbing term
considered, we can obtain another accurate equivalent
result :[17]

= + 0 ,

{ 2 2 /2
0
sin cos
4 0
( tan2 )
( tan )

exp
erfc
2
4
2

( tan2 )
( tan )
02 2 /2
+
tan exp
erfc
8 0
42
2
3 2
3 2
}
0
0
+
,
+

12
0
4
0
{ 2 2 /2
0
sin2 tan
=
2 0

03 2 }
tan2
tan
exp( 2 )erfc( ) +
,
4
3
0
2
(11)

(15)

For equivalent permeability, we can obtain the

same results as Eq. (15).
Then the reflection coefficient of uniaxial
anisotropy incident by the perpendicular electromagnetic wave is[23,24]

( + ) + ( )20

|.
= 20 log |

( ) + ( + )20 (16)

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CHIN. PHYS. LETT. Vol. 30, No. 10 (2013) 107702

Table 1. Effective electromagnetic parameter changes with the thickness of the absorber (infinite in direction).
/( )
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25
0.30
0.35
0.40

2.34420.0907
3.24700.1625
4.04530.2249
4.76510.2811
5.41990.3324
6.01810.3795
6.56490.4228
7.06390.4625

1.72750.0028
1.93580.0084
2.21430.0193
2.58510.0396
3.06620.0741
3.65920.1256
4.34270.1920
5.08030.2674

Based on the method described above, we calculate a honeycomb with an absorbed layer included: the
permittivity constants for the background medium,
the honeycomb structure substrate, and the absorbing layer are 0 = 1.0, = 4.0, = 12.0 1.0, respectively; and their permeability data are 0 = 1.0,
= 1.0, = 3.0 1.0, respectively. Other parameters are the same as those in Ref. [24].
(a)

h=0.10m
h=0.25m
h=0.50m

R (dB)

-5

-10

-15

(b)

R (dB)

-10
-12
-14

h=0.10m
h=0.25m
h=0.50m

-16
-18
0

0.5

1.5

d (mm)

Fig. 3.
The reflection coefficients of honeycombstructured materials in the parallel direction change with
the thickness of the absorber layer. Here is the thickness of the macro-absorbing materials. (a) The result with
a disturbing term considered and (b) the result for the
long-wave quasi-static approximation.
(a)

h=0.10 m
h=0.25 m
h=0.50 m

R (dB)

-5
-10

1.08900.0219
1.18400.0498
1.28380.0838
1.38690.1235
1.49190.1681
1.59700.2163
1.70090.2670
1.80220.3185

in Table 1. We can find that the effective electromagnetic parameters increase with the thickness of
the absorber. For the sake of the polarization tensor,
the horizontal-direction effective parameters are larger
than the vertical-direction ones. Equivalent permittivity changes greatly, whil thee equivalent permeability almost remains the same. All of these factors will
lead to the changes of reflection coefficient shown in
Figs. 3 and 4.
From Figs. 3 and 4 we can see that in most cases,
the greater the thickness of macro-absorbing materials, the smaller the reflection coefficient , and with
the increasing absorber layer , will first decrease
and then increase to convergence and not change with
. Comparing Fig. 3(a) with Fig. 3(b), we can see that,
in the parallel direction, in the long-wave quasistatic approximation is smaller than the results with
the disturbing term considered, but it is greater in the
perpendicular direction in Fig. 4. Considering all four
figures, we can find that Fig. 4(a) has the minimum
value of reflection coefficient in the vast majority
of cases. This means that when the electromagnetic
wave is incident on a medium in the perpendicular
direction, we have the best absorbing characteristics
in the strong fluctuation theory with the disturbing
term considered. This can provide a theoretical basis
for material designers.
In conclusion, the strong fluctuation theory with
a disturbing term considered is necessary for an electromagnetic wave at microwave frequency. When the
electromagnetic wave is incident on a medium in the
perpendicular direction, we have the best absorbing
properties with the disturbing term considered.

-15
-20

References
(b)

h=0.10 m
h=0.25 m
h=0.50 m

-5

R (dB)

1.15800.0790
1.30780.1539
1.44960.2248
1.58320.2916
1.70880.3544
1.82620.4131
1.93560.4678
2.03680.5184

-10
-15
-20
0

0.5

1.5

d (mm)

Fig. 4. Reflection coefficients in the perpendicular direction as shown in Fig. 3.

The effective electromagnetic parameters are listed

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