FEM
Overview
MATLAB based scripting tools have been established for finite element models (FEM) of radio frequency electromagnetic phased array applicators. These MATLAB routines define the applicator geometry for thermal therapy simulations with HFSS finite element software.
Six different applicators including a 140MHz breast applicator and the Sigma-eye phased array applicator are shown, and the MATLAB routines specific to each of the five applicators are explained. The front-end MATLAB routines greatly simplify the manipulation of each applicator geometry. Available manipulations include scaling the overall size of the applicator and modifying the orientation of the individual antennas. Each applicator is first generated in HFSS software and then the electric field distributions generated by the antennas are converted to MATLAB for post-processing. The finite element simulation results can be post-processed in MATLAB to visualize the computed fields and to evaluate new focusing algorithms.
The construction of the Finite Element (FE) Simulation Models are always very time-consuming. This process may take days or weeks depending on the complexity of the simulation models. Thus, the automatic construction of common used FE models are of great importance. This task can be accomplished using HFSS VB Scripting tools. That is, each component in the HFSS models is generated by VB command lines.
In order to expedite model generation with VB sctipts, MATLAB based tools have been established. All parameters needed in the HFSS model are setted and computed in the matlab code. In this way, the computation ability of HFSS is enchanced by MATLAB Math functions. For example, it is not easy to draw curved antenna as shown in Cylinder Applicator in HFSS and VB Script, but the curved antenna can be divided into the summation of several plain polygons and the peaks of the polygons can be easily found using MATLAB.
Eventually, the VB scripts are generated using the MATLAB, so it can be run in the Ansoft HFSS Simulation software. The simulation results (i.e. E-Fields) are exported back to MATLAB for post-processing.
Download
FEM is available from the FEM download page.