Description:
TECHNOLOGY AREA(S): Bio Medical
OBJECTIVE: Develop a versatile multi-physics simulation platform that focuses on biological effects of directed energy.
DESCRIPTION: Current modeling solutions for directed energy effects do not include methodologies that are appropriate for biological applications. The majority of available enterprise-level software suites focus on simulating mechanical deformation and/or failure such as those seen in the automotive industry or signal transmission/reception in electromagnetic applications. On the rare occasion a software platform has a directed-energy based package, they are not conducive to the rapidly evolving requirements that the Department of Defense (DoD), industry, and academia have for this technology, namely those of effects on biological systems. Developing a versatile software simulation environment for directed energy bio-effects makes a variety of research goals common to the DoD and associated industrial and research and development (R&D) base, medical, environmental, manufacturing, and academic facilities obtainable. The development of devices that involve directed energy bio-effects can be refined to enable rapid evolution towards a prototype at a reduced cost when an appropriate software model is available. This topic will employ publically available software libraries and/or open architectures to develop a software environment focused on simulating directed energy bio-effects to the fullest extent of their capability before supplementing them with original algorithms and code. The software will provide multi-physics simulations of varied problem spaces and parameters with the end goal of producing a reliable and robust package that is suitable to model mechanisms centric to directed energy bio-effects pertinent to the DoD, private industry, and academic institutions. Examples of such mechanisms include but are not limited to light transport in turbid media coupled to thermal and acoustic solutions as well as sub-surface vaporization of materials in an elastic media with the capacity for adaptive and dynamic meshing to account for highly variable and complex geometries.
PHASE I: Develop an initial concept design for the software environment that employs open source libraries to the fullest extent possible. The design will include the capacity to model key physical mechanisms that are fundamental to directed energy bio-effects for a wide range of problem space geometries.
PHASE II: Based upon the results of Phase I and the Phase II development plan, the company will develop a beta-level software package for evaluation by the Directed Energy Bio-effects Program or another program as specified by the sponsor. The software will be evaluated to determine its capability in meeting the performance goals defined in the Phase II development plan and the requirements outlined in this description.
PHASE III: The final products of this effort are a marketable plug-in for an open architecture, a library of functions for numerical methods, or an analysis capability for a variety of studies in biomedical optics, treatment methods, and/or general laser-material interactions in material processing.
REFERENCES:
1. Irvin, Lance J., P. D. Maseberg, Gavin D. Buffington, Robert J. Thomas, Michael L. Edwards, and Jacob Stolarski. BTEC thermal model. FORT HAYS STATE UNIV HAYS KS, 2007.; 2. Wen, Sy-Bor, Kevin Ly, Arun Bhaskar, Morgan S. Schmidt, and Robert J. Thomas. "Direct numerical simulation of the initial stage of a thermally induced microcavitation in a water-rich biotissue triggered by a nanosecond pulsed laser." Journal of Biomedi; 3. Lya, Kevin, Sy-Bor Wen, Morgan S. Schmidtb, and Robert J. Thomasc. "Direct numerical simulation of microcavitation processes in different bio environments." In Proc. of SPIE Vol, vol. 10062, pp. 1006209-1. 2017.; 4. Thomas, Robert J., Rebecca L. Vincelette, C. D. Clark III, Jacob Stolarski, Lance J. Irvin, and Gavin D. Buffington. Propagation effects in the assessment of laser damage thresholds to the eye and skin. AIR FORCE RESEARCH LAB BROOKS AFB TX, 2007.KEYWORDS: Multi-physics, Simulation, Modeling, Nonlinear, Hpc, Scattering, Absorption, Optics
