Ultrathin Conformal Magnetic Invisible Cloak for Irregular Objects

Magnetic invisible cloaking has been previously demonstrated but only limited to objects with rotational geometries either in spherical or cylindrical shapes, for which the classic analytical bilayer scheme could be strictly applied to design the hiding coat. In this work, we show that a quasi-static cloaking effect could be achieved for irregular objects, e.g., metals with sharp edges, using a numerical optimization scheme. In the quasi-static limit, it is unambiguously proved that the disturbance of the irregular geometries could be well compensated by the inhomogeneous distribution of the soft ferromagnetic (FM) layer either in permeability values or in shapes under the framework of a bilayer cloak. An FM mesh coat with a constant thickness of 0.5 mm was successfully engineered to meet the specific requirements. Experimentally, good cloaking performance with a field disturbance of less than 0.5% has been achieved for a 2 x 2 x 5 cm(3) brass bar in a wide frequency range from similar to 10 to 250 kHz. A commercial metal scanner was also applied to verify the practical potential. The general strategy to hide almost arbitrary objects was discussed in the end. In principle, the numerical conformal coat engineered by the composite material proposed here could be broadly extended for objects with various geometries.

Automated summary

A novel quasi-static magnetic invisible cloaking effect achieved through numerical optimization scheme is demonstrated in this work, which can be used for cloaking irregular objects. Experimental results show successful design of an FM mesh coat to achieve good cloaking performance with a field disturbance of less than 0.5% for a brass bar.