Diseño e implementación de un motor gráfico para la creación y visualización de objetos complejos en programas de simulación electromagnética

Resumo

This thesis presents the design and development of a new graphical user interface (GUI) for the newFASANT electromagnetic simulation software. The developed system allows geometric modeling integration of complex 3D scenarios, electromagnetic simulations and results visualization in the same application. The NEWFASANT S.L company has developed several software tools of electromagnetic analysis. These tools allows to reduce the design and manufacturing costs of the radiating elements and their environments. The design process is very important, a powerful tool is needed to create 3D models of real environments that can be simulated. In turn, the program’s success depends on how easy and intuitive it’s to work with the user interface. For the application, a new graphics engine has been developed, which allows to work with NURBS curves and surfaces in a simple way. The electromagnetic simulation kernel works with these surfaces due to the high performance, they allow to define accurately arbitrary shapes with less information. The user interface has been developed in Java using Swing and Java3D to develop the graphics engine. These libraries allow the integration of the 3D scenario in the GUI and provide the basic visualization tools. It has also developed the necessary functionality to work with NURBS, it does not depend of Java3D and could be adapted to other platforms like OpenGL or JOGL. The electromagnetic simulation process is divided into different modules (RCS, Antennas, Periodical Structures, IR ...) depending on the simulation type. The user creates or imports the geometric model in the GUI and selects the simulation parameters, usually by tabs or interacting with the 3D scene. Subsequently, the application writes the input files and execute the simulation program. When the process has finished, output files are read and the user interface displays the results in an attractive way. Finally and as a validation of the proposed tool, a parabolic reflectarray designed to generate a circular polarization discrimination using the VRT technique is presented. To verify the design, a demonstrator has also been created, which has been manufactured and measured to compare the results.