Tech-X offers highly specialized simulation tools for Multiphysics users.
Tech-X makes its mission clear right on the front page of its website: “Have a complex physics problem?” Its simulation software might help you make smarter decisions. The Boulder Colorado company’s flagship multiphysics simulation solver is VSim, which is tailored to solve problems involving plasma physics, vacuum electronics, electromagnetics and electrostatics for the aerospace, semiconductor, manufacturing and defense industries. The latest revision of VSim was released in August.
VSim’s target audience includes research scientists and product development engineers. As a result, it has a strong history of user publications and a dedicated annual conference. Since the company’s inception in 1994, it has gained thousands of citations and is used in 30 different countries. Some big-name users include NASA, the University of Oxford and Lancaster University.
Here is an overview of what VSim has to offer.
Multiple Applications for Multiple Use Cases
The VSim flagship offering can be bundled with additional software including:
- USim to simulate computational fluid dynamics of plasma.
- RSim to simulate radiation.
VSim grew out of the company’s VORPAL physics engine in 2010. It is a bridge between power and novice users. VSim relies on a graphical user interface (GUI) approach to simulation, as opposed to the code heavy VORPAL interface. So, like most of the current simulation tools out there, VSim and its components have GUI-based menus that guide users through the workflow. However, users can still work in the underlying code if desired. Users can also import CAD models or create geometry in the VSim environment.
VSim runs as a parallel software application, making it compatible with high-performance computing servers. And the software methods can utilize various simulation methods like finite-difference time-domain, particle-in-cell and charged fluid (finite volume). This lets users work in the electromagnetic, electrostatic and plasma fields.
Three models can be packaged with VSim for users working in specialized fields. They include:
- VSimEM is for electromagnetics simulation to design phased-array antenna systems, radar equipment and photonics devices.
- VSimVE is for vacuum electronics and microwave devices. Child-Langmuir current density studies and Fowler-Nordheim electron tunneling issues are the big applications for VSimVE, with diagnostics available for current, power and electron currents.
- VSimPlasma is a tool designed for plasma simulation of kinetic particles in background gases. Unlike the other two VSim products, the plasma portion is a particle-in-cell solver that uses Monte Carlo simulations to study “the effects of elastic, excitation, and ionization collisions between electrons, ions and neutral particles.”
USim also has its own set of modules. They include:
- USimHS to run hypersonics studies at high Mach numbers, with applications for designing atmospheric reentry shielding for spacecraft or radio communication devices that move at hypersonic speeds.
- USimHEDP to assess plasma behavior in environments with extreme pressure or temperature conditions. The most prominent use cases here include nanoparticle synthesis and dense plasma focus devices.
Helping Users Relay Their Findings
One thing on the Tech-X website that sticks out for me is the Animated Visualizations page, which is designed to help users find ways to communicate their findings to others.
Communicating results from simulation studies is a constant battle. These are incredibly dense concepts and explaining them to even lifelong scientists and engineers can be difficult. The animated visualizations here do a great job of showing what has happened during a simulation with graphics, helping to show concepts and different problem areas.
Users can choose between creating abstract animations that will show off a concept or explain a phenomenon and running a demonstration-type video.
A Culture of Publications and Community
The Research arm of Tech-X seeks to collect all the projects and studies that its users have completed while using the software and its tools. For multiphysics software targeting researchers and cutting-edge commercial products design, it’s important to show the depth of discoveries using your software. As a result, the website contains a long list of publications by engineers and scientists who have used the software dating all the way back to 1989.
It’s interesting to note that there are more plasma publications than vacuum and microwave device articles. This seems like a good indicator for the breakdown of user demographics among the VSim user base.
The Tech-X Worldwide Simulation Summit is the company’s annual convention, which is a free event that shows off the scientific progress made each year by VSim users. The event also shows off the newest releases of the different software offerings, added features and bug fixes. Some of the presentations show how scientific studies are being used in real time to help develop products and processes that will hit the marketplace in the near future.
What Does It All Mean?
When simulation programs are highly specialized in the way that VSim is, it’s hard to judge them against the rest of the players in the simulation landscape. Big simulation companies have many electronics engineering tools, but the offerings are geared more toward consumer electronics and autonomous vehicle development.
Curiously, VSim was a part of the Altair Partner Alliance starting at the end of 2017, but that offering was dissolved in mid-2021. Nonetheless, VSim is doing a good job of building a strong set of tools that will perform very specific engineering tasks and has a passionate user base for those tools.
There’s not a lot of fanfare and hype that’s apparent in the company and its communications, which appears to choose instead to create solid simulation tools and work with global partners to create a wider scientific body of knowledge.
For instance, the latest release from August didn’t have a huge swath of press releases showing off its new capabilities. Instead, a modest webinar touting the new features was shared alongside a set of release notes with all the passion of a GitHub page. The release did have some fairly big changes, notably the addition of the cylindrical EM solver that will help plasma design engineers in the realm of wafer fabrication.
Doing solid work and keeping your head down is a business strategy that many simulation suppliers make, but hiring a team of public relations firms might help Tech-X gain visibility outside of its active user base. There are great tools here, and the software can be used in projects ranging from consumer products to spacecraft launches and nuclear fusion reactors.
