Hertzon: Open-Source 3D Full-Wave FEM Solver

Posted by sasvari 20 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by dragontamer 18 hours ago

This is the next frontier for OSS tooling of electronics projects. Professional PCB software will FEA solve your PCB and look for noise or radio issues (did this trace accidentally become an antenna??)

KiCAD cant do this. So it's cool to see a project trying to tackle this problem.

Comment by laxisOp 18 hours ago

What is this actually. I dont understand.

Comment by GaN-on-SiC 17 hours ago

FEM solvers break up a large design into lots of tiny meshes, then solve integrals for the electrical/magnetic fields. At high frequency, this is significantly more accurate than approximating based on the copper geometry.

Two big uses are antenna design and RF circuit design.

I can't comment on this specific solver but it does mention using EMerge, an existing FOSS project, as its core. Another FOSS alternative is openEMS. Anyone doing this for a job will just pay for CST/Sonnet/HFSS/Axiem/EMPro etc.

Comment by magicalhippo 15 hours ago

Just adding that FEM is general, it can be used for other kinds of simulations than just electromagnetic waves. For example it can be used for determining strain and stress in building elements, fluid flows, heat transfer and more.