Design and Reliability Simulation of a G-Band Traveling-Wave Tube Multistage Depressed Collector With Curving Radiators Using FEA Method

The traveling-wave tube (TWT) is an important amplifier for the THz wave (0.1-1 THz). A multistage depressed collector (MDC) is a significant component in TWT for collecting energy. When the MDC is working, its temperature will rise, causing thermal problems. The ordinary method for solving the high-temperature problem is adding the radiators outside the TWT's MDC. In the previous design, most of the radiators were designed as straight panels, whose utility rate of space is poor and leads to bigger sizes. Moreover, there is always external vibration excitation from the outside environment, and the ability of the traditional straight radiator is not enough to resist the outside vibration excitation. This article designs a novel curving radiator to enhance the space utility rate and obtain lower temperature in the MDC and uses a new parameter space utilization ratio (SUR) to measure the heat dissipation ability of the radiators. A complete reliability analysis is carried out for this structure in ANSYS, including: 1) thermal analysis; 2) modal analysis; and 3) random vibration analysis.