A NEW TOOL FOR PREDICTING RAPIDLY AND RIGOROUSLY THE RADIATION EFFICIENCY OF PLATE-LIKE STRUCTURES

The objectives of this paper are twofold. Firstly, to present a comparison of several models used to evaluate the radiation efficiency of plate-like radiators. The models compared ranged from very simple ones based on modal average expressions, to refined calculations of the radiation impedance matrix with cross modal coupling. It will be seen in particular that simple models, such as Ver and Holmer's model, give useful guidelines especially for broadband excitations, spatially distributed forces, and thick plates. Expensive methods, such as the far-field approach and BEM are normally used when the hypothesis made in simple models are violated (such as with thin plates and situations where cross modal coupling is important). Secondly, to present a new alternative approach allowing a quick and rigorous evaluation of the radiation efficiency of plate like radiators. This new approach, based on a Taylor's expansion of the Green's function, has several advantages over the classical approaches which will be discussed in the paper. This approach represents a step towards answering the accuracy versus computation time problematic currently brought up by some engineers.