Integrated simulator for MEMS using FEM implementation in AHDL and frontal solver for large sparse systems of equations

Abstract

MEMS that exhibit strong coupling between electronics and mechanics need to be described and simulated in a united simulation environment, in order to achieve more flexibility from the description point of view, and to avoid convergence problems. Behavioral simulators and analogue hardware description languages enable modeling of MEMS. Even space- continuous mechanical problems can be described in the hardware description language. That description should and can be automated. Space-discretization commonly leads to very large system of equations. For solving such systems, mechanical FEM simulators usually exploit iterative algorithms that have very low memory demands. However, if the problem at hand contains electronics, as in the case of intelligent materials, iterative methods might be not applicable, since the convergence is not guaranteed anymore. In our behavioral simulator we have implemented a frontal solver, enabling solution of very large sparse matrices with modest main memory resources by storing only part of the matrix at the time. Thermal problems with more than 20000 nodes have been simulated.