Development and Measurement of a 3D Printable Radar Absorber

In this paper, we present our measurements about 3D printable microwave absorber materials. First, we determined the electromagnetic parameters of the material using different measurement techniques, whose some examples we present. Knowing the material parameters, a geometry for a 3D printable absorber was selected, and simulations were performed to optimise the geometry from X-band (8.2 GHz to 12.4 GHz) to Ka-band (26.5 GHz to 40 GHz). Pieces of absorbers were 3D printed using the optimised dimensions and were mounted to a metallic corner reflector as test subject. The corner reflector camouflaged in this way was then measured in an anechoic chamber, and measurements with and without the 3D printed absorbers are compared. We found good agreement between the measurements and simulations and found the structure and the material we used as usable candidates for the reduction of the radar cross section of an object.