Research method of aero-optical transmission effect for IR air to air missiles

Affected by surrounding flow field of dome, the target images received by a precision-guided weapon will suffer distortion and degradation when it flies at high speed in the atmosphere. This is called aero-optical effect, which reduces the precision of imaging detection system. We research on typical infrared air to air missile with a hemispheric irdome. The external flow field parameters of irdome under special flight status is calculated using computational fluid dynamics method. To get rid of accuracy loss in traditional mesh regularization process, generalized regression neural network and Barron operator are applied to getting refractive index and its gradient values at any point in space. Considering the limitation of plane tracing, we accomplish ray tracing in space with variable-step Runge Kutta. Light deflection and wavefront transmission performance are obtained to analyze the impact of aero-optical transmission effect on infrared detection system under different flight conditions. The proposed approach possesses great ability of reproducing near-field transmission of infrared radiation before it enters the detector.