Analytical Characterization of Creeping Waves on Dielectric-Coated Conducting Cylinders

Creeping waves are an important component of electromagnetic scattering from curved conducting surfaces, particularly in high-frequency regimes where surface-guided fields contribute significantly to the total scattered response. This paper presents an analytical characterization of creeping waves propagating over dielectric-coated conducting cylinders. The formulation considers a cylindrical conducting core covered by a homogeneous dielectric layer and investigates the influence of coating properties, cylinder dimensions, operating frequency and observation angle on the resulting creeping-wave behavior. An asymptotic electromagnetic formulation is developed to describe the excitation, surface propagation, attenuation and radiation of creeping waves around the coated cylindrical structure. The analytical treatment accounts for the interaction between the incident field, dielectric coating, conducting boundary and surface-diffracted field, providing a physically meaningful description of the transition from illuminated to shadow regions. Numerical evaluations are performed to examine variations in creeping-wave amplitude, phase, attenuation rate and angular distribution for representative material and geometrical parameters. The analytical results are further compared with appropriate numerical or reference solutions to assess the accuracy and applicability of the proposed characterization. The study demonstrates that dielectric coating parameters can substantially modify creeping-wave propagation characteristics and scattering behavior. The proposed analytical framework provides useful insight for electromagnetic scattering analysis, radar cross-section prediction, cylindrical structures and high-frequency computational electromagnetics.

Creeping Waves; Dielectric-Coated Conductors; Cylindrical Scattering; Electromagnetic Scattering; Surface-Wave Propagation; High-Frequency Electromagnetics; Asymptotic Analysis; Surface Diffraction; Scattering Amplitude; Radar Cross Section (RCS).

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