An aircraft radome usually refer to radar transparent, dome-shape structures which protects radar antennas on aircraft from aerodynamic loading, weather as well as impacts from bird strikes. Materials that are used for small aircraft radome usually have low dielectric constant and high toughness. Current composite material using high strength fibers such as glass fiber, carbon and aramid are commonly used in aerospace structures. However, the need for biodegradable materials has prompted the usage of natural fibers. Natural fibers have comparable mechanical properties such as low weight, low cost, renewable and biodegradable. In this preliminary work, comprehensive reviews of biocomposites materials are discussed in term of their properties for the purpose of evaluation for aircraft radome application. The present review will cover five local natural fibers namely bamboo, banana, kenaf, oil palm and pineapple leaf fiber.

In this paper, manufacturing process of aircraft radome via closed mold with vacuum infusion process is presented. Closed mold is needed to get smooth inner and outer surface. The radome mold was formed from the original part of the aircraft Duke 60 Beachcraft. The closed mold is made from fiber glass/polyester composite via hand lay-up technique. Tooling grade vinyl ester gel coat is applied on the mold to produce fine smooth surface and protection. Later, the radome part is fabricated with vacuum infusion and the consistency of thickness is achieved.

The preliminary analysis of laminate composite was conducted to analyse the optimal number of layers for aircraft radome application. In this work, the ESAComp software was used for preliminary analysis to predict the displacement during the flight operation. The ESAComp is a finite element software used for preliminary and conceptual design for composite layers. Flax fibre, glass fibre and epoxy resin were applied as the hybrid composite laminate design. The laminate construction consists of flax as the center laminate and sandwiched between glass fibre. Both fibres have the same weave pattern which is twill 2/2 and 200 gsm. The material properties for each materials were obtained from technical data sheet and used as input value for ESAComp. This software was used to analyse a single ply engineering constant by conducting fibre/matrix micromechanics analysis. The value of engineering constant of single ply for each material is then used for laminate analysis. It has range from 4,6 and 8 layers with 20%, 30% and 40% of fibre content on a flat panel with the size of 300 mm x 300 mm. The panel were fixed on each edges and under aerodynamic pressure load plus safety factor of two. Based on the result of analysis, minimum layer required is at least 6 layers if acceptance displacement is 0.1 mm. Therefore, experimental works on 6 layers hybrid laminate will be carried out to determine other requirement for aircraft radome application.