Is the recycling of solutions a route towards high-throughput calculations of problems in electrostatics (and elsewhere)?

July 19, 2012

Many practical situations in which solutions of the electrostatic problems are sought do not require just a single calculation for a precisely known geometry and boundary conditions on conductors, but many calculations on different geometries with different boundary conditions. Two notable examples of such situations are Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) and optimization of design of electrostatic systems with respect to some predefined requirement (e.g. electric field strength at some particular point or region). In such situations, the electrostatic solutions for geometries that differ very little are frequently needed. Read more →

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3D models with inhomogeneous dielectric media

June 20, 2012

In situations where the dielectric constant of the medium has spatial dependence, the application of Boundary Element Methods (BEM), including the Robin Hood method, might not seem as a method of choice. Whereas the Robin Hood method excels in problems with metallic objects in vacuum or problems with piecewise homogeneous dielectrics, if the dielectric medium is inhomogeneous, in general the electrostatic problem cannot be formulated via sources on boundaries. A method which solves for potential in 3D space might be ultimately required for a systematic approach. However, in many of these cases, it is also possible to successfully solve these problems using the Robin Hood Solver which implements the Robin Hood method. Again, the crucial property of the Robin Hood method that comes to the rescue is its ability to work with very large numbers of surface elements. Read more →

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Modeling complex objects using Boolean operations and .OBJ/.DFX import in Robin Hood Solver

June 12, 2012

The new graphical user interface we have designed and implemented in Robin Hood Solver v2.0 makes it effortless to create electrostatic models which will fit your real-world situation. With several clicks on the toolbar you can quickly place on the scene objects such as spheres or cylinders and change their properties as you wish.

We, however, are aware that five available geometric primitives (sphere, box, cylinder, cone and torus) and their derivatives would simply not be sufficient for the needs of many of our users and their more advanced electrostatic models.

Therefore, we have made possible to create really complex models using the two tools built-in into Robin Hood Solver’s interface in v2.0: boolean operations and import of pre-existing models created in other tools, such as AutoCAD. Read more →

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Electric field pattern for electrowetting

May 21, 2012

Most of people writing code, doing calculations or just putting together any kind of text late at night (or more or less any time of day) consider large quantities (mugs or pots) of coffee an integral part of their work environment. With large amounts of coffee inevitably come coffee stains. Apart from being a huge market for the industry of washing powder, what else could coffee stains be interesting for at all? Read more →

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Enhancing the power of electrostatic calculations in Robin Hood Solver with Lua scripting

May 9, 2012

We have put a lot of effort into developing advanced GUI for the next version of Robin Hood Solver (RHS). In RHS v2.0 you can create and manipulate 3D objects, 2D objects and point charges using only your mouse. Using Boolean operations you can quickly make unions and intersections of basic objects you have added to the model and in that way you can easily create complex objects. If that is not enough, you can import fairly complicated objects created in other tools (we support .out, .raw, .stl, .dxf and .obj files).

While great GUI is a strong advantage of Robin Hood Solver, especially when we compare it to other tools for electrostatic calculations, we are first to admit that there are many situations where even advanced graphical interface is not suitable for the task at hand – you simply need something more powerful.