Electrical properties analysis of wire mesh for mesh reflectors

The knitted wire mesh is often used as a reflecting surface of large deployable antennas. Different weaves have different electrical properties and it is very important and necessary to research the method of analyzing the electrical properties of wire mesh. This paper has developed an effective method to address the problem. First, a periodic unit of wire model in actual complex mesh structure is converted into an equivalent strip model according to the correlation between strip width and wire diameter. The equivalent regular wire-grid unit of the strip model is derived from the equivalences between the wire-grid unit and the strip model in near and far fields. Then the regular wire-grid units are arranged to form an equivalent mesh surface with the corresponding weave pattern, so the electrical properties of the mesh surface are equivalent to those of the actual mesh structure. Through analyzing electrical properties of the mesh surface including amplitude difference, phase difference and reflecting loss, we can find out the electrical properties of the actual knitted wire mesh. The single satin mesh and a two-bar tricot mesh are used as examples to illustrate the method of electrical properties analysis of wire mesh.