Thermo‐Mechanical Effects on Reflection Characteristics of Meta‐Materials for mm‐Wave Applications in the Outdoor Environment

Safe and reliable communication infrastructure for advanced air mobility requires an intelligent and adaptable propagation channel. Electromagnetic meta‐materials, especially meta‐surfaces such as the reconfigurable intelligent surface enable such intelligence allowing programmability with multiple modes of electromagnetic wave manipulation. Physical studies on the effects of the varying environmental conditions such as temperature, moisture, wind, and strains of the host surface on the electromagnetic response of these devices are limited by the high costs of planning, frequency band licensing and outdoor environment emulators. A thermo‐mechanical finite element co‐simulation framework of electromagnetic scattering to compute the electromagnetic near‐field is proposed. The framework is used to compute the far‐field complex reflection coefficient of an electromagnetic meta‐surface and its performance is compared between deformed and undeformed states. The results of this preliminary study show a significant deviation in reflection performance due to seemingly insignificant plate deformation, and motivates further studies with high‐fidelity models.