Development Of A Test Equipment For The Pressurized Radome

The radome is one of key parts of the missile. Performances of radome are directly affected by manufacturing accuracy and quality. The radome is a large complicated and thin-wall rotary body made of brittle material, and if the preparation of radome is not properly controlled, some defects such as micro-crack and pore will be produced inside the material. When flighting under larger load, the radome with material defects will result in destructive effect, thus it is required to test radome before fine machining. At present, there is no available equipment for testing radome, therefore the development of test equipment for radome is significant to ensure the manufacturing quality of the radome.Based on the analysis of the structure characteristic and technical requirement of the radome, a test method of radome is proposed, that is, the inner of radome is pressurized by high pressure gas, then to observe whether the radome body is destroyed under certain pressure or not, thereby to seek out the radome with defects. After researching the principles of pressurizing test radome, an equipment is designed and developed, which has the following functions: reliable positing and clamping, effective sealing, controllable and smooth inflating, safe protective measures for the broken radome, real time monitoring and displaying for positioning and clamping state. As a result, it solves the problems encountered in developing and producing of the radome.A positioning and clamping scheme is determined by using methods of finite element analysis and three-dimensional dynamic simulation. Positioning is carried out by using male cones at the larger end and the smaller end of the radome; it's proposed that the clamping device which consists of inner and outer tyres of rubber is driven by hydraulic system, so that the inner and outer male cones at larger end of the radome are uniformly clamped, and two pressurizing cylinders with different dimensions being designed, thereby to carry out pressurizing-clamping synchronized inside and outside of the radome on the premise of ensuring equality between inner and outer clamping force. By using suitable structural design method, some key problems during radome positioning and clamping, for example, balancing the axial force and so on are solved.Safeguard measures are taken from two aspects, i.e., the structural design of test equipment and control system. An implosion-reducing chamber is displaced inside the radome, so as to reduce the amount of high pressure gas, and an implosion proof barrel is mounted outside the radome, thereby to prevent the imploding airflow from hurting operators and apparatus; as to control measures, a method of inflating and clamping selfheld is used.