Aerodynamic heating of the dome on imaging quality degradation of conformal optical systems

The aerodynamic flow field surrounding the conformal dome was calculated. The thermal response of the aerodynamically heated conformal dome was analyzed. Gradient refractive index method was used to rebuild the non-uniform refractive index field of the conformal dome. Zernike polynomial fitting method was employed to establish the deformed surfaces of the conformal dome. Zernike aberration theory and modulation transfer function were adopted to evaluate the imaging quality of the conformal optical system. The results show that the aerodynamic heating of the dome severely affects the imaging quality of the conformal optical system.