Current status end future trends in computer modeling of high-power traveling-wave tubes

Summary form only given. Describes the operational principles and design steps in modern, high-power TWT development. The major computational stages that the industry has seen over the last four decades in both 2-d and 3-d modeling are reviewed and comments made on their relevancy to current work and future trends. Recently, as a result of shrinking research and development budgets, multi-disciplinary, industrial research staffs have largely disappeared and the development of new tube designs is being performed by working engineers with various other product line support duties. Concurrently, the performance of personal computing has increased to such a level that a significant degree of modeling complexity can be performed on the desktop. These two developments have ushered in a results-oriented desire for tube design codes that offer ease-of-use, quick turn-around and modularity. Another trend is in "concurrent engineering" where the same solids modeler that prepares geometry input for device physics analyses generates the mechanical layout machine drawings, purchasing bill of materials, and numeric-controlled machining tool paths. This manufacturing philosophy offers benefits in terms of product time-to-market as well as overall quality. The talk also reviews integrated frameworks for TWT design such as MMACE.