Multi-physics simulations.
Investigators: Prof. Mehl, Dr. Bradley
This project aims at bringing the complex coupled multi-physics systems that occur in interactions of robots with soft (biological) tissues in an efficient parallel software environment. This includes three-dimensional muscle models for both mechanical and electrochemical processes in muscles developed, the interaction of the soft tissue with rigid parts of robots (structure-structure interaction), and coupling with external signals. The coupled system constitutes a highly sophisticated and accurate model for the robot-tissue coupling. It requires simulation with a high grid resolution delivering a discretization accuracy that is balanced with model accuracy. Therefore, we have to run simulations on a massively parallel supercomputer (e.g., at HLRS in Stuttgart), which poses significant new challenges induced by the modular nature of the model and the resulting modular nature of the simulation environment. In order to keep code development times minimal, we will make use of existing codes for the involved physical effects where available. However, parallelizable iteration schemes over all fields as well as load balancing and communication strategies over several codes have to be developed and implemented.