Material #

Overview #

Setting the material's properties is an necessary part of any $\mu$-Pro® module. Any input value related to material phases and property tensors are configured through the material's input explained in the next few pages. For beginners knowing how to use the GUI interface to guide you create the material properties' input is enough, but for power users, you may want to learn how the material properties part of the input.xml file is structured.

There are three levels of elements,

• [material] The parent tag of all material phases and properties. The material can have multiple phases.
  • [phase] Set the properties of one phase. Each phase can have multiple tensors.
    • [tensor] Set one property tensor. Each tensor may contain several components.
      • [component] Set the value for one component of a tensor.

Material #

Material is usually a child element of the system element, which allows you to set the values of various property tensors of each phases. In most cases there can only exist one material element.

Intuitively, the whole system is considered as one material. In most of our calculations, the material is a composite of multiple phases.

Element structure #

• material
  • format Specify the source of material/phase information for calculation. For now, the only available option is xml, that is the input.xml file.
  • phase Set values for phases. You can set multiple phase elements under material.

Example #

<material>
    <format>xml</format>
    <phase>
        <label>0</label>
        <tensor>
            <pointGroup>custom</pointGroup>
            <name>permittivity</name>
            <rank>2</rank>
            <component>
                <value>3.5</value>
                <index>11</index>
                <index>22</index>
                <index>33</index>
            </component>
        </tensor>
    </phase>
    <phase>
        <label>1</label>
        <tensor>
            <pointGroup>custom</pointGroup>
            <name>permittivity</name>
            <rank>2</rank>
            <component>
                <value>100</value>
                <index>11</index>
                <index>22</index>
                <index>33</index>
            </component>
        </tensor>
    </phase>
</material>

Phase #

Phase is the child element of the material element. There can exist multiple phase elements, and each phase element can have multiple tensor elements. Each phase element must also has a label element as child, which is used to link with the label you specify in the structure generator so that the program knows which material property should assigned to each simulation grid point.

Besides from the normal phase defined in material, there is a special type of phase called "ref" defined in the "solver" element, which is used to set the homogeneous value needed by our solver. The syntax is the same as a normal phase element, except it does not have a label child.

Element structure #

• phase
  • label The phase label. This is the same value you used in structure generator.
  • tensor The property tensors of current phase.

Example #

<phase>
    <label>0</label>
    <tensor>
        <pointGroup>custom</pointGroup>
        <name>permittivity</name>
        <rank>2</rank>
        <component>
            <value>3.5</value>
            <index>11</index>
            <index>22</index>
            <index>33</index>
        </component>
    </tensor>
</phase>