Finite Element Simulation (FEM) integrated into pcbnew
Description
This issue is to track FEM integration for KiCad.
At the moment, the numer of OSS solutions for FEM simulation can be counted on one hand. There is notably OpenEMS which also has some third-party python scripts to generate meshes but this tool is mainly used for antenna simulation. The overall idea would be to integrate a FEM simulator into KiCad for PCB simulation which can be used without specialized knowledge.
Functionality which might be interesting:
- DC Power Integrity
- Current Density
- Via stress-analysis
- Voltage Drop
- Resistance
- Power Disipation / Heating
- Current Density
- AC Power Integrity
- Current Density
- Voltage Drop
- Plane Capacitance
- Extract RLGC Model of Track
- Get characteristic impedance of a track vs frequency.
- Capacitive / inductive coupling between two or more tracks
- PCB-Filter simulation / S-Parameter extraction
- PCB-Antenna simulation
- ...
KiCad Version
Application: KiCad PCB Editor
Version: (5.99.0-10204-g4c9f7c414d-dirty), debug build
Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.0.5
libcurl/7.75.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1j zlib/1.2.11 zstd/1.4.9 libidn2/2.3.0 libpsl/0.21.1 (+libidn2/2.3.0) libssh2/1.9.0 nghttp2/1.43.0
Platform: Linux 5.11.7-arch1-1 x86_64, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, gnome, wayland
Build Info:
Date: Apr 11 2021 14:31:43
wxWidgets: 3.0.5 (wchar_t,wx containers,compatible with 2.8) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.75.0
OCE: 6.9.1
Curl: 7.75.0
ngspice: 33
Compiler: GCC 10.2.0 with C++ ABI 1014
Build settings:
KICAD_SCRIPTING=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_MODULES=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_PYTHON3=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON=ON
KICAD_SCRIPTING_WXPYTHON_PHOENIX=OFF
KICAD_SCRIPTING_ACTION_MENU=ON
KICAD_USE_OCE=ON
KICAD_SPICE=ON
KICAD_STDLIB_DEBUG=OFF
KICAD_STDLIB_LIGHT_DEBUG=OFF
KICAD_SANITIZE=OFF