Available Technologies

Introduction

Computational methods have become a cornerstone in many scientific disciplines, including electromagnetics. CAD/CAM/CAE (CAD) is the leading methodology for engineering design and solving higher order equations for systems of interest.  CAD for electromagnetics primarily focuses on generating 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional representations of curves and surfaces by subdivision and fitting (meshing).  Its goal is to divide the surface into single common units such as triangles and build a physical representation of the object’s surface with this common unit.  A pitfall of this technique though is that it often produces a discontinuous surface lacking continuity in the resulting surface’s 1st derivative.  This discontinuity is problematic and causes errors in analyzing the physics of the surface. 

Once the meshing and physical representation is complete, analysis of the physical properties is desirable.  However, much of the physical analysis such as electromagnetic fields or temperature responses is calculated by finite element analysis (FEA).  Currently, it is necessary to convert data between CAD and FEA packages to analyze new designs during development, a difficult task since the computational geometric approach for each is different.  The two most time intensive steps are the development of the geometric representation and the conversion of data between the two computational systems.  For application to electromagnetic computations development is needed to bridge the gap between these two methodologies.

Description of Technology

This technology is a method for the design and analysis of electromagnetic (and acoustic) devices by means of improving the mathematical representation of the desired surface integrated with the physics on the electromagnetic field interaction of that surface.  This method uses iso-geometric analysis and couples the physical representation of an object to the physics on/within the object seamlessly in one data set.  The analysis renders a smooth surface with continuous 1st and 2nd derivatives. 

Benefits

• Speed—Significantly less time spent developing geometric model (meshing)
• More accurate—  much smaller error than competing technologies
• Ease of implementation—software can be incorporated into existing systems

Applications

• Computer aided design for electromagnetic field analysis

Patent Status

Patent application published no. 20170018118 and software copyright

Licensing Rights Available

Full licensing rights available

Inventors

Shanker Balasubramaniam, Jie Li

Tech ID

TEC2015-0121