AbstractIn this letter, we present the performance of a typical artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) under different bending extents. Square patch array‐based AMC is employed as a benchmark to demonstrate the dependence of AMC characteristics on the degree of curvature. We show that increasing the extent of bending leads to a shift to a higher resonance frequency and bandwidth degradation which suggests the importance of such analysis when designing AMC structures for conformal applications. Finite element method full wave electromagnetic solver has been employed to extract the reflection phase profile of the structure under study. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this kind of study is being reported for the first time. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:2503–2505, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.27124